


Brook Two Suns

by tastewithouttalent



Category: Fate/Zero
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Blood and Violence, Bodyguard, Camping, Escape, First Aid, Hypothermia, Implied/Referenced Sex, Jealousy, Literal Sleeping Together, M/M, Magic, Minor Character Death, Princes & Princesses, Slurs, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-13
Updated: 2018-12-03
Packaged: 2019-06-20 15:39:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 33
Words: 87,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15537432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tastewithouttalent/pseuds/tastewithouttalent
Summary: "Waver is a bastard, younger than Kayneth by long decades and carrying the truth of his inferior bloodline in every line of his face; and yet still he holds the next claim to the throne, in the increasingly likely event that Kayneth is unable to get a child on his cold beauty of a wife." A royal decree has done Waver more harm than good in legitimizing him as the bastard second son of the ruling king, including drawing the disdain of the crown prince Kayneth. When tensions come to a head, it's only his unlikely friendship with a political hostage that may give him a chance at survival, and perhaps even some part of the recognition he craves.





	1. Displaced

In retrospect, Waver thinks he might have been happier in the country.

It was a lot more boring, to be sure. He read through every book available in the isolated farmhouse he lived in while he was still a child; by the time he approached his formal entry into adulthood he had worn the covers off the texts with even delicate handling, and he’s confident he could have recited every word back verbatim given enough time and an audience more patient than the ever-hungry chickens that pick and cluck their way through the dust around the barn. For long years he’s felt his location as a prison, distant from any but what occasional knowledge his own two feet can carry him towards and his insignificant personal funds can purchase; the allure of the distant city seemed a dream almost too much to be borne, compared to the burden of isolation that has been the structure of the only life he can really recall.

The royal summons had fallen on him like a blow from heaven, like a sign to prove the value of his dreams by handing them to him all at once. Waver has known for most of his life that the elderly man and woman he lives with are far from the grandparents they claim to be: a few night’s eavesdropping with one of the shadow-spells he taught himself from the single battered spellbook he bought for himself saw to that. It wasn’t much of a blow: his caretakers are kind and even affectionate, in the slightly bemused way of the elderly trying to keep up with the energetic flights of fancy offered by a young, constantly-curious boy, but the lack of blood relation is more an explanation to an obvious mystery than a shock in itself, and it relieves Waver from the ties of mundanity that would otherwise surround the draggingly sedate life in which he was raised. He’s free to imagine a thousand narratives for himself, to set himself as the hero in every story he hears and every history he lays hands to, and that is more than enough to pass the months and the years that form his childhood. He’s nearly seventeen when the messenger arrives, decked out in royal livery and with a gaze so haughty it barely seems to allow the existence of the couple who have been the only family Waver has ever known, and Waver is happy to obey the ill-explained order to return to the castle for a royal audience if only for the chance it will give him to wander the streets of the city and perhaps even catch a glimpse of the royal libraries, famous the world over for their scope and breadth of content.

He certainly never expected the truth. Waver had imagined some important quest, perhaps, some chance to go forth into the world and prove his value as the ambitious young mage he is; but the court is far less interested in what he could become, given the chance, than in the blood that runs in his veins, however contaminated it may be. Waver can see something of his own features in the face of the king, he supposes, perhaps around the set of his jaw or the pale of his eyes, but for the most part he thinks he must tend heavily towards the unknown tavern wench who served him for a mother, at least until such time as his existence became a known liability to be swept aside and hidden in that farmhouse where no enemies of the crown would ever think to look for a bastard son. He certainly bears no resemblance at all to the crown prince Kayneth, older than him by some two decades and with nothing but hatred in the blue eyes he fixes on Waver’s undecided green ones, and whatever stubbornness pride has put into Waver’s backbone flags and fails to drop his eyes to surrender against the wide polished flagstones of the throne room rather than going on meeting that glare.

He discovers more, later. The servants hardly talk to him -- apparently Kayneth’s temper has been well-established, thanks to a petulant childhood and an adolescence marked with rages the way some are marked with romances, and no one wishes to fall on the bad side of the heir apparent -- but Waver’s quick to pick up information and quicker to make sense of it, and by the end of his first week in the castle he understands the situation as clearly as if it had been laid out before him like the diagram of a new spell. Kayneth has spent his life as the only son of the king, praised and petted for no more than existing as proof of the continuing royal bloodline; a fact which played well to his strengths until such time came to demonstrate his ability to further that same. A dozen years hence Kayneth was provided with a wife of suitably blue blood to sire the next prince to secure the line a further generation, and a dozen years have come and gone with not so much as an extra inch against the waist of the princess Sola-Ui’s tight-fitting gowns. Some of the rumors still remain, dusty and cracking as the servants speak them with laughter instead of sincerity now: that Kayneth was too busy taking lovers to bother with his wife, that she continued to hold her chastity like a treasure even after such time as such had been sold for royal use. But passing years carried the possibility of those aside, without so much as a murmur of a possible royal bastard to prove the prince’s virility, until the whispers took a different tack and began to question Kayneth’s very ability to sire the son required for the royal lineage. The servants gossip of women brought in from local villages, of low-class taverns with too few scruples to hide the news of the crown prince visiting in increasing desperate hopes of fathering a child upon one or another of the hired girls there, until finally, Waver pieces together, matters were dire enough to merit the admission of a different royal bastard into the formal family line.

Waver isn’t sure he likes it. There’s a thrill to being a prince, of course -- to go from farmhouse to royal court is the biggest jump he thinks anyone could hope for, something straight out of one of those childish stories he read to pieces before giving up the simple narrative for more complex fare. But the growing maturity that balked at the simple happy-ever-afters in the stories he used to fawn over senses the tensions around him now, feels the weight of them like a live blade pressing close against his throat. He may be a recognized prince of the realm, now, thanks to royal decree, but the dark hair he carries from his mother marks him unmistakably as the bastard everyone knows him to be, however euphemistic the official proclamation may have been about conveying that information. Even then the efforts at disguise were minimal: him being recalled to the palace is a direct attack on Kayneth, Waver can see that much just in the hate in his half-brother’s icy glare, and his lingering presence is a constant, grating reminder of the blow done to the other’s notable pride. Waver is a bastard, younger than Kayneth by long decades and carrying the truth of his inferior bloodline in every line of his face; and yet still he holds the next claim to the throne, in the increasingly likely event that Kayneth is unable to get a child on his cold beauty of a wife. Waver’s very insignificance is a slap to Kayneth’s pride, a reminder that he thus far has not been able to offer a better alternative, and Waver finds he doesn’t much enjoy playing the part of goad to the crown prince of the country.

At least the library is remarkable. Waver lacks the upbringing to blend in with the polished courtiers around him, and he can see the judgment in the faces of even the servants just for a glance, as their determination of his value forms in their gaze without any consideration of his actual abilities or worth; but he’s here as a token, and as it turns out no one much cares what he does with his time beyond that. The collection of tomes that comprises the royal archives is awe-inspiring, Waver thinks it must be so even to someone with more experience of the world than the limited confines he has been left to run in until this point in his life, and he rapidly discovers that there is no one to chastise him for touching the crinkling pages of even the oldest texts in the collection. Many are in other languages, strange scripts and flowing hands that Waver can hardly see as words at all, much less guess at their meaning, but plenty are in his native tongue, and those he consumes with alacrity, reading through histories and spellbooks and philosophy alike without regard for the subject matter, so long as he can lay hands to more of it. He has some faint idea in the back of his head of proving his own worth by demonstrating some stunning intellect, or by laying hands to some fragment of long-lost magic enough to alter the turning of the planets in their spheres; even knowing that he will never be able to overcome the burden of his lineage and the weight of his bastard title, he keeps looking, seeking out impossibilities hidden somewhere in the narrow lines of text filling the pages before him and feeling untapped potential aching against the inside of his chest like an ill-healed wound.

He’s in the library again this morning, having given over the social misery that breakfast entails in favor of a cup of tea left to cool at the edge of his desk while he reads over the latest of a series of histories of the country that he has been consuming as rapidly as he can lay hands to the weight of the tomes. They’re written in an archaic style, something between scholarly distraction and historical pretense, but there is something fascinating about reading of people Waver himself has met in the structure of his strange new life as if they’re players in a theatre, to seeing the name of the king who served as the father he never knew till now as a conqueror imbued with all the power of righteous victory upon on the battlefield. In actual fact Waver’s father seems a fairly unremarkable man, beyond the title that grants him his power and the almost petty cruelty towards Kayneth he has demonstrated in acknowledging Waver as his son in the first place, but the pages of this text make him seem a hero, someone above the normal drudgery of human existence, shining bright as a star among the masses. It seems madness, to Waver, to read of his stubborn-jawed father triumphing over the brilliance of the opposing country’s general by sheer force of will, as much a make-believe story as the tales he consumed with such pleasure as a child. But there is no history but this, after all, and there is something terrifying and thrilling at once to thinking of the generations to follow, where these words alone will make the king a man he never was just by the tale they tell of his exploits. It’s not fair, for him to be so lauded just for being powerful enough to play patron to the historians who tell his tale, but when Waver reads the text spilling across the page he can almost imagine his own name there instead, formed into a tale of his wit and cunning triumphing in spite of all those who looked to crush him down to the dirt. It makes his heart beat faster, draws his breath quicker in his chest, until he’s so tense that when the door to the library comes open he startles and nearly knocks his cup of tea right over onto the pages before him.

“Your Highness.” There’s no indication in the servant’s tone that Waver has done anything at all out of the ordinary; there’s no actual certainty that he is even seeing the other’s existence. Waver might be more appreciative of this fact if it weren’t such a constant, rather than limited to moments when he is in the midst of throwing over every pretension to royal dignity he has.

Waver secures his cup in its saucer without finding much more consideration in him for the delicacy of the china than a glare stern enough, he thinks, to do even his distant father proud, before he turns his head to fix the servant with the same expression. “What?” There’s not much warmth on his tone; he would be more pleased with this if he didn’t suspect the creak in his voice to swing him closer to petulance than the royal irritation he wants to convey.

The servant doesn’t blink. He’s gazing out at the far wall of the library, his attention fixed over Waver’s shoulder as if all his interest is wholly dedicated to the shelf weighed down with dust-coated tomes, or perhaps as if Waver himself of of little more interest than the handful of texts he has formed into the outline of a wall around him. Waver’s frown deepens but it makes no difference; there’s no sign that he has any audience for this show of displeasure at all. “The crown prince, His Majesty Kayneth, requests your presence.”

Waver grimaces. “‘Requests,’” he repeats. “Does that mean I have the freedom to refuse?”

The servant’s lashes flicker. It’s the only shift in expression he allows himself. “Your attendance is required by the prince.”

Waver snorts. “Yeah,” he says, and reaches to slam the book in front of him shut over the brief and all-too-temporary distraction the words within provided. “That’s what I thought.” He pushes himself to his feet and considers drinking the cup of tea that he so nearly avoided upending; but it’s long since lost the heat it held this morning, and it’s unlikely to be moved in his absence. Besides, his throat is closing up on the inevitable strain that always comes with an audience of those whose royal blood runs demonstrably _more_ royal than Waver’s own strain, and he’s not sure he could manage to swallow the tea down in any case. He looks to his clothes instead, tugging at the edge of his tunic to straighten the line of the seams over his shoulders and brush away what traces of dust may have accumulated over the last hours of pleasant occupation, and then he straightens his stance and lifts his head, as braced as he can be against the far less pleasant interaction awaiting him.

He lifts a hand to gesture the servant back towards the door as he approaches. “Lead on,” he says. “Don’t want to keep my dear half-brother waiting on me.” The servant ignores his command -- a calculated slight, Waver suspects -- electing instead to linger by the door until Waver is stepping past him and reaching to open it himself. By the time the man turns to reach for the handle Waver has to stop short, caught in the very un-princely act of opening a door for himself, and he can’t help the way his face flares to red even at the man’s deliberately restrained “Your Highness” that carries only the faintest tinge of judgment on it.

Waver would like nothing so much as to turn on his heel and retreat back to the corners of the library, to hide himself amidst the histories and the spellbooks until the world has turned to give him a fresh palette to work from, without the burdens and entanglements that he inherited with the circumstances of his birth, before he had the least opportunity to change them. But he’s a prince now, in title if not in practice, and that brings with it certain attentions that he can’t avoid, however much he may resent them. He grimaces at the open hallway, feeling his shoulders draw up towards his ears as if to hide the stain of telltale embarrassment across his features; and then he draws a deep breath, and lifts his chin into haughtiness, if not dignity, and he steps forward and into the hallway to wait for the servant to follow and direct him to his destination.

However clear Kayneth’s dislike of him may be, Waver is learning, there are some shows of propriety that must be maintained at all costs, and it doesn’t do to keep a member of the royal family waiting.


	2. Disruption

Waver doesn’t care for his half-brother’s taste in decoration. It’s true that the crown prince’s quarters bear as much self-assurance as well-polished wood can bring to bear upon its inhabitants, and that every detail from the cut of Kayneth’s coat to the strict folds in his neatly-made bed speak with resonant force of his status and his standing, as if power is carried in the weight of his clothing and the grandeur of his surroundings as much as by lineage and the chance of his situation. But the whole of it feels oppressive to Waver, as if one would have to constantly speak and think and exist with the kind of bated-breath care elicited by the throne room Kayneth is clearly emulating, and he can’t imagine spending the free hours of his day here as the prince seems to.

Not that it makes a difference. It’s not as if Kayneth has called Waver here to critique his taste or lack thereof in the choices he makes in outfitting his quarters and his life, and Waver supposes the overbearing weight the walls seem to exert on him is rather the point of this particular exercise. Even knowing that he can’t help but grimace as he steps through the door held open by the servant whose bow leaves no doubt as to the recipient of his subservience; coming through the doorway is so much like walking into a church that Waver can feel his shoulders tense on the strain of guilt even with nothing more than the burden of his existence to prick him.

Kayneth certainly isn’t interested in easing his half-brother’s discomfort. He turned as soon as the door came open, pivoting aside from the desk as heavy in itself as the whole frame and mattress of the bed Waver used to sleep in in the nook by the roof of the farmhouse that gathered heat enough to lull him through dreams the whole of even the iciest of winter nights, to face his demanded visitor fully. His feet brace at the floor, his hands clasp in his lap, and Waver comes up shorter than he had intended just in response to the force of that stare hitting him. It’s not a glare, exactly -- there’s not enough bite in it for that -- but Kayneth couples the expression with a curl of his lip and an angle to his nose that make it clear he’s only reserving anger because someone as far beneath his notice as Waver himself is too insignificant to merit such attention.

“Lord Velvet,” he says in the faintly nasal tone Waver has only had occasion to hear in audiences like this. “We appreciate you answering our summons.”

Waver can hear the mockery under the prince’s words; it’s not even well-disguised, without any need for such under the present circumstances. If he had a better handle on his own temper he thinks he wouldn’t rise to what is so clearly bait, but he’s never been particularly known for his cool-headed consideration. “I’m not a lord.”

“Of course you’re not,” Kayneth responds, so quickly Waver can feel his own words gain the force of rote just by how clearly his answer was anticipated. “Even lords have some kind of lineage to their name, don’t they? It’s our mistake, Waver.”

Waver’s not particularly fond of ceremony; he’s more interested in real respect than in titles he didn’t earn, and the name of _Prince_ still feels like an extra and unnecessary appendage, as if people who address him that way might be speaking to someone else just over his shoulder rather than actually to the person standing before them. He still can’t like the way Kayneth’s voice drawls over his given name as if it’s slick with the pond scum the prince clearly considers its owner to be. But there’s nothing he can do, other than insist on claiming that title that makes him feel as much of a sham as Kayneth considers him, so he sets his jaw against the vicious words he wants to throw and contents himself with letting his tone bleed his irritation for him. “What did you want with me? I was in the middle of reading.”

“Ah yes,” Kayneth sniffs. “We have heard tell of your insatiable hunger for the royal library. We admit to some surprise that you can manage the texts at all. They must be slow going for a farmboy’s education.”

Waver scowls. “I can _read_.”

“And not do much else,” Kayneth responds, as smoothly as if Waver really is following the steps of some predetermined dance. “A true prince can hardly expect to rule with no more education than dabbling in witchery and country spellwork.”

Waver’s cheeks flare hot in spite of himself. It doesn’t seem fair that someone with ice in his veins in place of blood can force Waver into such a heat of temper for a few dismissive words, but Waver invariably finds himself blurting out desperate attempts at self-defense that he can feel turn to the painted paper shields of children as rapidly as he gives them. “It’s not _witchery_. I’m a _mage_ , a proper one.”

“We’re sure you like to say so,” Kayneth says. “Remarkable that someone with enough potential to become a true mage was so overlooked by the royal academy.”

“I didn’t get a fair chance at it,” Waver protests. “They only took a pair of applicants from our village, they weren’t looking for anything more than flashy magic.”

Kayneth sniffs. “Being noticed is as much a part of success as anything else. Anyone who tries to claim otherwise is simply unwilling to admit their own failure.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” Waver snaps. “A prince in a castle, you’ve never been anything _but_ noticed. All I want is a chance to prove myself.”

“Which you’ve been granted,” Kayneth tells him, still with no more heat on his tone than frost on a winter morning. “And you fritter it away in hiding yourself in the library until you’re as besmirched as a chambermaid.”

Waver looks down at his tunic with more haste than he ought to show. He was sure he had brushed away the worst of the dust as he left the library, but what didn’t show in the dimmer illumination there is thrown into clear relief against the dark green fabric by the blaze of candlelight filling Kayneth’s quarters with another casual demonstration of needless extravagance. He rubs at the smudge of pale grey before giving over to cross his arms at his chest in a losing battle with the color at his cheeks.

“You’re not a prince,” Kayneth declares, that nasal tone dragging over the words to make their condemnation absolute. “You’re not a mage. You’re nothing more than a child starry-eyed on delusions of his own inventiveness.” He turns aside, pivoting away from Waver without deigning to offer any more than a flippant gesture to sweep him aside. “We have more important things with which to concern ourselves than a cast-off bastard. Go back to your books.”

Waver is so hot with shame and embarrassment and frustration that it’s only when he’s out of the prince’s quarters and halfway down the length of the hallway that he thinks of the fact of his own summons to throw back against Kayneth’s claim of his unimportance. He actually turns on his heel to stomp back down the hall the way he came, his shoulders tightening on ire as he goes, but the servant standing before the door refuses to grant him access, and even Waver’s temper can’t overcome the loss of dignity he would suffer from shouting insults through the door he’s barred from entering, like the petulant child Kayneth dismissed him as. Waver stands in the hallway for a moment, seething with frustration as he glares at the shut door before him like it’s a stand in for all the other entries that have blocked his desired path before now; and then he turns to retreat down the hallway, his shoulders tense as if they can hunch up high enough to block him entirely from sight, even if just for one hour’s worth of peace.


	3. Importune

The next time Waver goes looking for a book, he takes it and himself together and retreats from the library entirely. It’s been a haven for the last months, one of the rare spaces where he’s unlikely to be interrupted by courtiers who barely make the effort to hide their disdain or by the prowling irritability of his half-brother’s temper, but the arrival of Kayneth’s man with his pointless summons made it clear to Waver that he needs to make himself even more scarce than he has been so far. He’s not interested in the hunting the king and his followers go on and less so in the political negotiation Kayneth seems to be constantly playing at; all he really wants is to be left alone with the royal library at his fingertips and hours of uninterrupted time in which to lose himself in the pages of the texts within.

He suspects he’s not intended to take the books from the safety of the library enclosure, but he is a prince, after all, in title if in nothing else, and nothing short of a direct order from the only two people in the palace who technically outrank him is likely to induce him away from his plan. The king never bothers with him, as he hasn’t since his first dramatic recognition of Waver into the official lineage, and if Kayneth is ready to satisfy his frustration in whatever jibes he can land he remains occupied for the span of breakfast in exchanging icy smiles and even colder pleasantries with those noblemen and women who gossip so assiduously of his bedroom affairs behind his back. That gives Waver an hour at least to make his escape, even with the pause by the kitchens to lay hands to a pair of pastries to serve as his morning meal, and by the time the great bell in the north tower is chiming the hour Waver is free of the palace walls, with his uneaten roll in his hand and a book under his arm as he cuts across the grounds to find a secluded nook in which he can hide himself for at least the span of the morning if not part of the afternoon as well.

It doesn’t take him long to find a likely corner. The grounds are expansive but the king’s taste, or perhaps Kayneth’s, runs towards low hedges and winding paths rather than the shady trees that might offer better hiding to a young man dressed in forest green and looking to avoid recognition at a casual glance. But there are buildings, too, out past the winding paths that form strictly symmetrical walkways all around the border of the castle walls, and it’s to those that Waver takes himself with as much speed as the fear of being stopped can grant him. There’s a training ground for the palace guards to the west, with ground hard-packed by dozens of scuffing feet and the long, narrow space of a barracks where the trainees and new recruits are housed; to the north are the stables, where the king and his followers are likely to head on all but the wettest of days in pursuit of some kind or another of physical activity. But the east has a series of small buildings, clustered together as if taking refuge in each other and the forgetfulness of the rest of the palace. Waver has never seen anyone go anywhere close to the storage those provide; they seem the perfect place for him to lose himself for a few hours of much-needed peace.

He’s pleased with his choice. The doors are unlocked, when he tries one; the interior is heavy with the weight of air rarely circulated but there’s none of the layer of dust that he had been afraid of finding waiting for him. This space must get more use than the far-off reaches of the library collection; or maybe it’s the lack of moving air that has kept the javelins and maces set into place against the walls so absent the grime Waver had been afraid of finding. Regardless, there’s no one here now, and no one to interrupt him; Waver is happy to set himself up in a corner of the room somewhat clearer than the cramped space closest to the door so he can lay his book open over his knees and resume reading while he makes a meal out of the roll still in his hand.

It’s easy to lose track of time. Waver was looking for something to absorb his attention, to pull him aside from the reality in which he is presently living courtesy of Kayneth’s personal struggles and the king’s decision to highlight those, and the chance to be out of the confined space of the library seemed a good opportunity to put some of the spells captured in the weight of dusty pages to practice without running the risk of an unintended consequence or an unexpected audience. Waver’s been reading through these for days, now, shaping the words of magic against his lips and tracing over the pattern of the sigils under the drag of his finger; he’s been anxious for a chance to try them under his own power, and this isolated corner he’s found for himself seems as good a place as any.

He already has a spell picked out to start with. There are more complex ones available in the pages, intricate traceries of spellwork like webs laid out across the parchment and some simpler ones, too, that are meant to do something more dramatic than simply bring a desired object to Waver’s hand. But however highly Waver may rate his own abilities, he can see the obvious dangers in trying an untested explosion spell or similar without a more experienced mage present to rein in the results if needed, and he’s unlikely to meet with any kind of success in tracing elaborate tapestries for alchemical transmutations in the dirt floor of an old storeroom at the edge of a palace. So he chooses something simple, and unlikely to cause damage in the unfortunately likely event it fails, and after reading over the page again -- as if he needs to, after memorizing the details over the span of the last week -- he finally lays the book aside for reference so he can square himself over the space of clear ground in front of him.

It’s a relatively simple sigil. Waver’s memorized the more complex ones that will start a sheet of paper to a flame and has successfully laid out one of those that demand particular ingredients to form the lines of the seal with the aid of the blood from a few chickens his foster mother killed for one or another holiday meal; in comparison, the restrictions on this one are easy to recall without referring back to the book. Waver keeps his hand angled carefully upward and his sleeve caught back against his wrist to keep from dragging through the pattern he’s already laid out; he brings the shape in towards himself, so by the time he’s lifting his hand from the line running directly before his crossed legs the whole pattern is laid out in the dirt in front of him. Waver lifts his hand from the sigil, considering the shape and checking the pattern of it against his memory before he turns back to the book to double-check his work. It looks perfect to his eye, every line in the dust before him a perfect match for the ink-dark curves soaked into the page of the book, and that means all that is left is the invocation itself.

Waver turns back to the sigil and fixes his gaze upon it as he presses his palms together in front of his chest and takes a breath. “Spirits of the wind, of the earth, of the heavens, hear my command.” His voice is frustratingly shaky; he grimaces and shakes his head to steady himself deliberately before he goes on. “The mage Waver Velvet demands your obedience.” He had thought of giving his formal name, with the slew of titles that come with it; but in the end it’s the connection of a mage to his magic that’s most important, and the name the court has gifted to him unasked hardly feels like himself at all. He uses his old name instead, the one he has borne with him over all the years of his life thus far. “By the power that I wield, I do ask of you to give me--”

The door to the storeroom comes open so suddenly Waver doesn’t even have time to close his mouth on the form of his words. They break off to a startled yelp in his throat, squeaking high into the upper registers he had hoped to leave behind along with the embarrassments of his childhood, and the words of the summoning spell evaporate as rapidly, dropping out of Waver’s head as if he had never learned them at all. He’s dropping his hands to his sides, rocking his weight forward in expectation of pushing to his feet and blurting some meaningless excuse to the servant or guardsman that has just come through the door; but then his eyes come into focus on the man standing in the entry and holding the weight of the door open with one arm as he gazes down at Waver before him, and Waver goes still instead.

The man’s not a servant. He lacks the livery of the palace serving men, for one thing, and for another Waver is sure no servant ever lasted long under Kayneth’s watch with the open expression the man before him is wearing, as clear to read as a summer sky shows a storm. He might be a guard, with the breadth of his shoulders and the muscle showing heavy against his bare arm and the flex of his shoulder, but the guards are meant to bear uniforms of their own, and this man’s simple white tunic and dark breeches show no indication of the insignias Waver has learned to recognize as marking out the soldiers and recruits from the rest of the palace residents. And more than all that: he has hair like Waver’s never seen on anyone but Kayneth’s reclusive princess, neither the near-white of the royal blond nor the peasant simplicity of Waver’s darker shading but red, a vivid red the color of a roaring fire or a blazing sunset, the locks spread out around his head brushing the top of the doorway and glowing in the beard covering his jaw and chin until he looks as if his whole head is on fire with the uncanny color.

“Hello,” the man booms. His voice is as loud as the color of his hair; Waver would swear he can hear it rattle the metal of the weapons stored on the walls around him. “This is hardly the place for a child to play, boy.”

Waver’s eyes open wide, his face flushes to instant heat. The man’s size and alarming hair are as forgotten as the spell he has just been interrupted from casting; all his focus is thrown over immediately to respond to the blow of this unexpected insult. “I’m not a _child_ ” he says, and pushes to his feet in such a hurry that he nearly catches his foot against his ankle and goes sprawling into the dust of the storehouse before he manages to get to his feet and look up to glare at this stranger from the effect of his full height.

The man blinks at him. He doesn’t look as taken aback as Waver could wish he did; then again, he still retains the advantage by a double handspan of inches. Waver thinks his head must barely clear the shoulder of the giant of a man before him, to say nothing of the too-clear difference in build between Waver’s narrow shoulders and slender limbs and the solid wall of muscle presented by the form standing in the doorway before him. A prickle of something almost like fear winds its way down Waver’s spine like it’s digging tiny hooked claws into him. His words spilled from his own defensive pride more than a consideration of his actual situation; if he strikes sparks off this giant’s temper he will be laughably outmatched in any kind of a physical fight. But when the man’s expression shifts it’s to break into a grin that spreads blinding white teeth across the whole of his face in a smile too wide for handsomeness but more than enough to convey the sincerity of the laughter he fills the storehouse with.

“Certainly, you may have the full of a grown man’s years,” he says. “But you must have been sickly as a child, to be so frail now. I have seen boys ten summers old that might throw you in a wrestling match.”

Waver gapes for a moment, knocked entirely speechless by this insult so casually offered. “I am a _mage_ ,” he finally spits out, hissing the words to force as if to overcome the delay with which he laid hands to them. “I’d hardly engage in something as dangerous as _wrestling_.”

“A mage, are you?” The man’s gaze drops to Waver’s feet and the half-scuffed pattern laid out over the dust. “I’ve never known a mage to have to hide his work in the shadows unless he enjoyed the mystery.” He looks back to Waver, his gaze dropping down and over the other like he’s taking stock of the whole of the other’s presence and identity and value in the span of a single glance. “You don’t look like the type to be satisfied with skulking in the dark.”

“I’m not,” Waver has to admit. “I’m...learning.”

The man beams another enormous smile at him. “Teaching yourself? Admirable indeed.” He steps forward from the doorway; his stride is so long that Waver has no time to do anything but cringe back towards the wall before a hand is landing on his shoulder. It’s intended as a pat, Waver thinks; the force is so much that he’s glad of the wall at his back, to keep him on his feet when he would be knocked clear off them otherwise. “I applaud your motivation, boy. But knowing the chances of victory is as much a part of strategy as anything else.”

Waver stares up at the broad-shouldered frame now leaning in over him. His heart is racing with the possibility of danger so clearly offered by the ripple of those muscles and the force of that hand against him; the apparent absence of any such risk is enough to flutter his thoughts to giddy hysteria. “What are you _talking_ about?”

“Know what you are,” the man advises him. His hand weights hard at Waver’s shoulder. “Student, soldier, warrior, king. It’s only in seeing where you have yet to tread that you can plot your course.” He gazes into Waver’s face for a long moment, his mouth drawn down onto the tension of sincerity before his forehead creases and his head tips on some new consideration. “What’s your name, boy?”

Waver frowns. “I told you, I’m not a child.”

“Indeed,” the man says with hearty sincerity. “Perhaps if you obtain better nourishment you can lose the appearance of one as well.”

Waver hisses an inhale of protest. “I’m--” he starts, but the man is grinning at him as if amused by Waver’s irritation, and Waver closes his mouth hard on the spill of words to glare up at him instead. “Don’t call me boy.”

“This is the reason I asked for your name,” the man says with infuriating logic.

Waver scowls at the man. That hand is still on his shoulder, the sheer weight of it more than enough to remind him of his own less-than-secure position in this negotiation, but his temper is too hot to think of how outmatched he is, and besides it’s hard to think of this strange man as any kind of a threat when his entire face is glowing with a smile as broad as his shoulders.

“Waver Velvet,” Waver says. It’s only after he’s spoken that he realizes he’s given his old name, that if there were ever a time for the full spiel of titles and lineages this would be the moment for it; but he can feel himself coloring just at the thought of the laughter this is likely to meet with, so he closes his mouth on the words and offers a frown instead. “Waver.”

“Waver,” the man says, deliberate over the syllables as if he’s committing them to memory. “It is good to meet you.” He tightens his hand against Waver’s shoulder and beams at him. “My name is Iskandar. I am glad to have made your acquaintance. It’s good to form alliances in these situations.”

“Alliances?” Waver repeats back, forehead creasing on confusion, but Iskandar just nods as if he was offering agreement and not a question and pats his shoulder again before pulling his hand away.

“I shall leave you to your studies, mage Waver,” he says, and lifts his hand to wave as he steps back towards the door. “I hope we may have the chance to meet again!” And he’s gone, moving out of the door and pulling the weight shut in his wake before Waver can find it in him to do anything more than gape blankly at the other’s retreating back. The door latches again to leave Waver in the shadows of the storehouse, alone with his text and scuffed-out magic sigil, but Waver doesn’t look back to them for some time, and when he does he finds he can’t hold to the meaning of the words at all, no matter how many times he reads over them.


	4. Identify

Waver’s retreat from the castle walls proves far more successful than he ever guessed it would be. Other than his one interruption, he spends the whole of the morning and even the first few hours of the afternoon entirely undisturbed. The relative discomfort of sitting on the ground as compared to the soft of the chairs in the library is a small price to pay for the satisfying knowledge that Kayneth has no idea where Waver has hidden himself, that he might be sending his men to search throughout the castle with ever-increasing irritation while Waver remains secluded in his own self-made peace. As a result he lingers far longer than he should, until his back is aching from hunching in over the text on his lap and his stomach is growling with a need for some sustenance beyond the few buttery rolls he offered it this morning; it’s only when he moves to stretch and feels the dizzy weakness of hunger in his movement that he resigns himself to returning to the space of the castle in search of lunch, or at least the means to put together a makeshift meal for himself.

Kayneth is not at all pleased. His adventure was worth it, Waver thinks, just to see that supposedly noble brow creased with a frustrated impotence better suited to a child than a grown prince; but his own desire to grind irritation into his half-brother’s sore spot regarding him has unfortunately stripped him of the possibility of future retreats before they even have a chance to form.

“Never again,” Kayneth snaps, bringing his hand down flat against the arm of the chair in which he’s seated. It’s not a throne, technically, but Waver is sure he himself has never sat in anything half so grand as what the crown prince claims as nothing more than a place in which to pass the hours before the splendor of the evening meal. “You may have been accustomed to freedom in that farmhouse of yours, but you are a prince of the realm now and you cannot simply spend your leisure hours hiding in some...some _storehouse_.”

Waver thinks Kayneth is overstating his concern. He’s sure in himself what has the other so irritated, and it’s hardly an overabundance of fear on behalf of his half-brother’s safety. But he’s slipped through the control Kayneth likes to exert over the castle and all its inhabitants, and that is certainly enough to grind in against the damage Waver’s formal recognition has already done to the other’s wounded pride. It’s too bad that Kayneth caught him out so quickly -- Waver had been hoping he might be able to hold onto his hiding space for maybe a week at least -- but it’s still satisfying to see how thoroughly his secondary goal of angering the other into a temper has played out. Some of that satisfaction comes through in Waver’s voice when he speaks to answer, and he doesn’t make any attempt at all to ease it away. “I’m not meant to be in the library and now you don’t want me in the palace grounds. Where _am_ I supposed to be, if not out of your way?”

“Restrained,” Kayneth snaps. “Under guard, if need be. However unimportant you may be in yourself your title carries weight with it enough to reflect on the entire royal line. We will not stand idly by while you make a laughingstock of yourself and of us by association.”

Waver lifts his chin to tilt his nose up into the air as he looks down at Kayneth before him. “Maybe you ought to sit for it, then, instead, since you seem so fond of that.”

Kayneth’s expression darkens with the speed of a thunderstorm sweeping in over a summer sky. His hands tightens at the arms of his chair and he surges to his feet, leaning in sharply as he rises to cast Waver into his shadow. His shoulders are rigid, his glare is dark, but Waver is taller than his slender build makes him seem, and even drawn up to his full height Kayneth misses matching him by a handful of inches. Waver thinks of the giant he confronted in that same dim-lit storehouse that has so offended Kayneth’s sense of propriety, remembers the sense of being overrun just from the immediacy of a greater presence than himself, and he holds the prince’s gaze without so much as flinching.

“We will not permit you to carry on this way,” Kayneth hisses into Waver’s face. “You will be assigned a guard, to protect your person at the very least from such attacks as must become part of your awareness in your present status. Until such time as you consider your own behavior with a dignity befitting your role and what fragment of royal blood flows in your veins, we will do whatever is necessary to give you the education your upbringing failed to.”

Waver coughs a laugh. “You’re going to throw me in the cells? You’re not even king yet.”

Kayneth takes a deep breath and straightens, steadying his balance back over his feet as he lifts his head with visible effort to recollect his composure. He shuts his eyes for a moment, his mouth tightens to vanish his already thin lips into the ice-white that pressure urges them to; by the time he returns his gaze to Waver that flicker of vicious fury is gone, repressed back to the untouchable chill that he has radiated with such dedication in so many of their interactions.

“Certainly not,” Kayneth says, his tone implying that even the structure of Waver’s question is enough to reveal him as the uncouth farmboy the other considers him. “Our concern is simply to maintain your safety, just as one wishes to protect an infant from the dangers they might encounter upon a city street.” He turns on his heel to offer his back to Waver, a dismissal of importance if not in fact, and Waver can feel his momentarily equal footing giving way from beneath him like sand collapsing over the edge of a cliff. Kayneth returns to the table alongside his throne-like chair to touch against the sheet of parchment there, tapping his finger against the script over it like he’s reflecting upon the words. “We will assign a bodyguard to look after you. We have a few candidates in mind to choose from. Of course, the primary armed force is occupied in reestablishing control over the newest of the territories, and the guardhouse is overwhelmed with the latest recruits. Perhaps we might be able to pull one of the recent trainees to take on this task. Then again, the trainees have a responsibility to manage the comings and goings of merchants passing through the palace gates, and with the recent influx of supplies to replenish the storerooms…”

Waver glares at the back of Kayneth’s head as the other goes on speaking. His explanations are too fast for Waver to make sense of and clearly not intended to actually serve the purpose of providing his audience with an understanding of the situation. It’s all a show, the same as the decorations in Kayneth’s own quarters and the tilt of his head and the fine cut of his clothes, a demonstration of his own intellect and awareness and worth to stand in stark contrast to Waver’s bumbling efforts to emulate even a fraction of it. The awareness makes Waver’s jaw set, makes his shoulders tense with irritation; for a moment he indulges in a brief, foolish fantasy of shaping his fingers into the sigil to call forth fire and catching alight the slicked-back weight of Kayneth’s hair at the back of his neck. It would only be for a moment, Waver tells himself, before he would snuff it out with a clenched fist, just to teach Kayneth not to turn his back on him so dismissively. But it would still be an act of violence against the crown prince, however harmless the heat might prove in practice, and whatever else Waver might be struggling to learn that detail, at least, he’s abundantly clear on. It’s more than his life is worth, to flare Kayneth’s white-blond hair with the red of an open flame; but the thought itself sparks a possibility into his mind, immediate and striking enough to rock him back on his heels while Kayneth is still murmuring considerations over the paper before him. “What about the large man?”

Kayneth goes still over the page; it’s only after his voice stalls that Waver realizes he had spoken right over the other’s words without any consideration of the interruption he’s offering. When Kayneth looks back over his shoulder at Waver his eyes are as frigid as ice. “The _large_ man?”

Waver’s face heats at the disbelieving mockery on Kayneth’s tone, but he sets his jaw and lifts his chin to dig himself into his statement rather than backing down. “I know everyone in the guards must be quite...fit. But this man is enormous, a giant. He barely fit through the doorway.”

“What doorway?” Kayneth says in that same icy tone. “Have you taken after your mother, to be entertaining soldiers in your bedchambers?”

“No,” Waver snaps, before he’s parsed the words and flared to the red of indignant embarrassment. “I... _no_. It was in the storehouse, earlier, when I was reading.” Kayneth’s eyebrow raises, just slightly; the motion is so minimal it carries more judgment than a more dramatic action might. Waver clenches his teeth and goes on, struggling for voice even as he can feel his words jumping high on desperation to give up what maturity he might have found otherwise. “I met a huge man. He came into the doorway without knowing I was there and we surprised each other. He was _enormous_ , with a red beard and shaggy hair the same color. You must know who he is.”

Kayneth is still watching Waver, still with that eyebrow raised into skepticism, but there’s a crease in his forehead, now, as if he’s reconsidering his judgment of Waver as a pest and wondering if he might not be entirely simple-minded. “There is no one of that appearance in the guard barracks.”

Waver huffs. “I bet you don’t even know everyone there,” he says. “It’s not as if I’m just making him up.” Kayneth’s expression doesn’t change as he gazes at Waver; Waver has to hold himself back from the urge to stomp his foot against the floor as if he truly is a child throwing a tantrum. “We spoke for several minutes, it can hardly be impossible to find a man that size.”

“We’re sure,” Kayneth says in a tone that indicates the opposite. “We don’t suppose you gathered any further information on this mysterious stranger in the time you spent making friends?”

Waver grimaces. “No,” he says; and then, as memory flares: “Wait, yes! Yes, he told me his name. Iskan--Iskandar.” Waver makes a face as he struggles over the fit of the harsh consonants against each other. “His name was Iskandar.”

He returns his focus to Kayneth’s face. He’s expecting more of that blank disbelief, maybe even coupled with the start of a mocking smile against the other’s tight-pressed lips and an offer to see Waver to the infirmary until his bout of madness has passed. But Kayneth is staring at him instead, the tension in his face stripped entirely away into such wide-eyed shock that he looks nearly human for the first time Waver has ever seen.

“Iskandar,” he repeats with significantly more grace over the pronunciation than what Waver managed. “You met _Iskandar_.” His expression breaks into a laugh but there’s no warmth on it, no invitation to share in his amusement: Kayneth’s laughter is as cold and distant as his gaze. “ _That_ is who you wish as your dedicated bodyguard!”

Waver’s jaw sets, flexing hard as if to defend against the cutting edge of Kayneth’s amusement. “What’s wrong with that?”

Kayneth lets his laughter give way to a grin still brittle enough to draw blood, Waver thinks, if anyone were unwary enough to approach it. “ _King_ Iskandar is a guest of our country,” he drawls, the words catching to vivid clarity as he shapes them. “He has been in residence since our victory against him and his men over one of the disputed borderlands.”

Waver swallows. He’s read enough of those curated history texts to parse what Kayneth is saying, under the flowery equivocation. “He’s a _hostage_?”

“An honored guest,” Kayneth repeats. “And you wish to name him your _bodyguard_.” He breaks into another round of laughter while Waver’s face glows to color.

“I didn’t know who he was,” he mumbles without really trying to be heard. “He never told me. Of course I wouldn’t have…”

“No,” Kayneth says, speaking sharply as he lifts a hand to wave away Waver’s fumbling protest. “This is the best joke since your unlooked-for arrival. A foreign king bodyguard to a bastard prince!” He snorts again and lifts his hand to smooth his hair back across his head. “I’ll pass the order along at once. Perhaps you can even learn some measure of royal dignity from him. Even if he _is_ a barbarian, he certainly carries himself with more presence than _you_.” And he gives way to laughter again, this time with such an edge to it that Waver doesn’t wait for an overt dismissal. He just ducks into the sketch of a bow, not bothering to make it anything other than sloppy, and turns to make his retreat with his face burning scarlet and Kayneth’s laughter chasing him down the hallway no matter how fast he strides.


	5. Overrun

By the time Iskandar arrives to meet him, Waver has constructed a plan for himself. It’s true that he had no idea of the other’s true status when he had mentioned him to Kayneth; in retrospect he can’t even say what it was that brought the other to mind at all, beyond some flicker of memory vivid enough to pull words from his tongue before he had thought them through. He thinks it was more to spite Kayneth than anything else, from a desire to have a companion of his own choosing rather than a spy formally set at his half-brother’s whim; and with Waver’s status within the castle, he has vanishingly few people to choose from that have so much as looked at him as something more than inferior blood beneath a too-heavy title. It’s no wonder that he had blurted the other man’s name, as the only person he has met since his arrival who has offered him anything warmer than the brittle chill of forced politeness; he could hardly be expected to know the true status of the man he had taken to be some kind of a soldier after their meeting.

There’s no point in backing out of it now, though. Kayneth issued the orders for Waver to be confined to his quarters until his bodyguard was prepared to take responsibility for his well-being, and by the end of the first very boring afternoon Waver would claim a hundred foreign kings as his choice just for the freedom to leave the space of the quarters that have never seemed so narrow before. He amuses himself with plans for the morning, with the best approach to take to establish his dominant position; after all, he _is_ a prince in this realm, whatever Iskandar may be in his own. They are not in Iskandar’s home country, here he is no more than a foreign hostage with power enough to be described as a guest instead of a prisoner, and what sideeyed judgment Waver encounters from his own countrymen will surely not be of any interest to a foreigner. Iskandar will be assigned as his bodyguard, with instructions to follow Waver’s guidance wherever the other wishes to go; Waver contents himself with this thought, as he drifts into sleep under the weight of his drawn-up blankets, and he slips into dreams with the thought that at least he’ll be able to be confident in his position with this person, if no one else.

He wakes to a knock at the door, the sound coupled with a summons to breakfast called through the door rather than accompanied by the offer of assistance in preparing for such that Waver is sure the other members of the family receive. It’s another slight but not one he’s willing to fight for -- the servants have a distinctly chilling effect upon him, with their judgment unvoiced but perfectly clear in the gazes they turn on him, and he’s not ready to give up the good mood he created for himself from his imagination last night. He pulls on a clean shirt himself, and fishes a jacket out of his closet to shrug on atop it, and he’s still pulling at the laces when he steps into his boots and goes to open the door and emerge into the hallway.

“Boy!”

Waver jumps so hard at this unexpected greeting, and the unexpected audience beaming at him from the doorway of his room, that he stumbles backwards in an overt retreat. His heel catches on the undone lace of his other boot, his foot catches and fumbles his balance, and he falls back to land hard against the polished floor of his bedroom. The impact is enough to bruise and merit a flinch of pain, but Waver doesn’t spare more than a moment to shake out the ache in his wrist where he caught some portion of his weight; he’s somewhat more occupied in staring shock up at the man looming in his doorway instead.

“You,” he blurts, with significantly less confidence than he had hoped to show in this first meeting. “What are you _doing_ here?”

Iskandar grins that face-splitting smile down at him without any sign at all of embarrassment or apology at knocking Waver entirely off his feet with the shock of his presence. “I’ve been assigned to be your bodyguard,” he says with cheerful good humor. “I’m told you requested me specifically.”

“Oh,” Waver says, sounding far more confused than he intended. He closes his mouth on the tremor of uncertainty in his voice and frowns, hard, trying to force himself back into composure as his face burns with self-consciousness. “I didn’t really have anyone else I could think of.”

“I’m honored by your recognition,” Iskandar laughs. He braces both hands on either side of the doorframe and leans in, craning his neck to look around the space with open interest. “So these are the quarters of royalty in this land.” He turns back to gaze at Waver with as much interest in the other as he had for the room. “You failed to mention you were a prince, mage Waver.”

The words help steady Waver’s confusion, offer him back a grasp on at least some measure of his composure. “Ah,” he says. “Yes, I am.” He pushes at the floor to get to his feet in a rush to at least gain back what dignity he has been giving up by sitting on the floor while Iskandar looms over him. Being on his feet doesn’t remove the difference between them -- it in fact does far less good than Waver had hoped it might -- but at least this way he can draw himself up to his full height and lift his chin in imitation of the haughty composure Kayneth is so fond of demonstrating. “I am Prince Waver, second in line to the throne. I have granted you the honor of serving as my bodyguard.”

Iskandar’s face splits wide over another booming laugh enough to fill the whole interior of Waver’s bedchamber with warmth. “And I am King Iskandar, future emperor of this and all countries. I will gladly accept your honor as the tribute due to me.” He steps forward out of the doorway and lifts a hand; it’s only his prior experience with this particular variety of approval that lets Waver steel himself for the impact of the other’s hand pressing down against him, and even then him staying on his feet is a near thing. “I will enjoy being shown around the palace by a prince of the realm, even a bastard one.”

Waver was opening his mouth to protest this misapprehension Iskandar is operating under regarding their relative positions, but the man’s words strip the air from his lungs and take the strength from his body. His head ducks down, his shoulders sag; he drops his gaze from the focused bright of Iskandar’s eyes to look to the floor at the corner of the room instead. “I suppose even foreigners have heard of that, then.”

There’s a pause. Iskandar’s hand at Waver’s shoulder lifts; for a moment Waver thinks the other is going to pull away and lead the way out the doorway to leave him to follow or not as he wishes. He’s thinking very seriously about staying in his rooms outright, perhaps in requesting a pile of books be brought to him from the library; surely he can force a servant to obey such a direct order, even after everything. Then there’s a touch under his chin, fingers catching to brace his head steady, and when Iskandar pulls Waver’s gaze swings up along with the force urging his head up to face the other.

Iskandar’s smile is gone, his booming laugh as absent as if it was never there. He’s gazing full into Waver’s face, now, amusement gone from his expression and replaced with an intensity enough to freeze Waver where he stands as if he’d been commanded to it. Waver’s felt some part of Kayneth’s well-learned power in the judgment of the other’s blue eyes, has seen a brief example of even more self-assurance in the dismissive way his father bestowed a title to make a prince from a peasant; in neither of them has he felt anything like the absolute presence the man before him is now exuding. His eyes lock with Iskandar’s, his attention fixes entirely on the other’s face; Waver thinks the room around him could be full of Kayneths and he still wouldn’t be able to so much as turn his head to consider them, wouldn’t be able to spare a thought for what judgment they might lay upon him so long as Iskandar’s stare holds his own attention as firmly as those fingers hold his chin.

“There is no shame to you in your parentage,” Iskandar says, his voice soft but still rumbling with strength enough that Waver can feel the force of it down the whole of his spine, can feel it grounding out against his feet at the floor as if with a painless blow. “You do not choose who you were. What matters is what you wish to become, what you choose to lay hands to and claim as your own.” He holds Waver’s gaze for a moment, the silence after his words ringing as if with the resonant echo of their force before his mouth drags up at the corner into a grin. “Even a princeling like you can become something great, if he decides to do it.”

Waver’s face flushes as scarlet as the shading of Iskandar’s hair. He lifts his hand from his side to smack against the solid wall that Iskandar’s arm makes where the other is holding his chin; it’s only Iskandar deliberately letting his hold go that allows Waver to succeed in forcing away the other’s touch, and he does so while letting his grin spill wide across the whole of his face.

“I am a _prince_ ,” Waver insists, aware even as he speaks that his voice is jumping to heights enough to undermine his attempts to secure respect as quickly as he demands them. “How dare you speak to me so casually?”

Iskandar laughs and lifts his hand to ruffle Waver’s hair out-of-order against his head. “You may make a king yet,” he says as Waver hisses and ducks away so he can drag his fingers through the mess the other has made of his appearance. “Come, princeling. There is much I wish to see of this palace of yours and the strength to do so must begin at the breakfast table.” He closes his hold on Waver’s wrist -- his hand is large enough to entirely enclose the other’s arm without straining -- and when he turns to stride towards the door he does so with Waver in tow, stumbling as he tries to keep up with Iskandar’s enormous strides and button his jacket into place over his shirt at the same time he scrambles for protests that fall entirely unheard against the broad wall of the other man’s shoulders.

He thinks he would regret his request for Iskandar’s company, if he was given the least time to think about anything at all other than catching up with the whirlwind that has taken over his immediate existence.


	6. Resources

“ _This_ is where you spend the whole span of your days?” There’s another one of those laughs large enough to quiver the ground underneath Waver’s feet, no matter how dense the stone may be. “I begin to see why you are such a frail thing, if you hide from the sun all your daylight hours!”

Waver is beginning to deeply regret his request to Kayneth. It had seemed a decent idea at the time; even after discovering the identity of the man he asked to have as a bodyguard, he could see a way to claim the interaction as a boon to himself, as a way to make the most of his already-struggling situation. But it’s been hardly a full day since he nearly ran into the unassailable wall of the other’s chest in coming out of his personal chambers, and the span of a few hours has made the reality of Waver’s situation painfully, unavoidably apparent. Iskandar’s laughter follows him wherever he goes, the sound of the other man’s voice expands to fill the nooks and crannies of any space Waver might try to claim for a moment of peace; he’s nearly afraid to venture outside and find that Iskandar can lay claim to the very heavens as easily, that he will simply unfurl his overwhelming presence to sweep out across the whole of the earth and the expanse of the sky as well. They’ve only just retired from breakfast -- a much longer affair than what Waver is accustomed to, with Iskandar at his side determined to eat everything available and heartily insisting that Waver consume a similar amount -- and already Waver is beginning to consider how early he can reasonably claim retiring to bed to attain the minimal peace he may be able to find for at least the span of the evening.

“I’m not _hiding_ ,” he says now, as he trails Iskandar into the echoing space of the library that seems unsettlingly smaller with Iskandar’s shoulders to offer context for the soaring heights of shelves around them. “I’m _studying_. I told you, I’m a mage, and that means I need to study. Don’t they have books where you’re from, or are you too busy thundering around your kingdoms to bother with things like that?”

“Of course we do,” Iskandar says. That’s another point of frustration; while Waver hardly wants the man to turn the sour-mouthed judgment on him that Kayneth is so ready to volunteer, it would be nice to feel as if he could land any kind of a point when he’s deliberately trying to needle a reaction out of the fortress of a man before him. But Iskandar’s good humor has been as unfailing as his volume and unflagging as his energy, so far at least, and even Waver’s nastiest comments roll off him to be met with amusement. Waver can’t help but think of the petulant attacks of a child waving a toy sword whose attacks fall pointlessly against the steel armor of a full-fledged knight, whose very strength grants him the leniency to be amused at the obviously futile blows. He’s not fond of feeling like a child, not after laying claim to his hard-won adulthood several months hence; he’s never felt as young and foolish as he does just by being in Iskandar’s presence.

“We have libraries,” Iskandar is continuing, his back turned towards Waver with no consideration of the scowl the other is turning on him. He has his hands on his hips and his head turned up to look at the shelves around him; his pose is unquestionably that of a conqueror looking out upon the spoils of his victory. “The greatest of them is in my own city, larger by far than this collection that your people have put together. Knowledge is vital to everyone, mages and warriors and emperors alike.”

Waver scoffs. “There is no greater library than this one,” he informs Iskandar’s back, pleased to have finally caught out the other in a point of ignorance amidst the overwhelming self-confidence he exudes. “Everyone knows this palace has the finest collection of texts this side of the great ocean.”

Iskandar booms another laugh. Waver would swear he can see dust shiver free of the shelves to drift in a haze to the floor. “Everyone does, do they?” He turns his head to look back over his shoulder, offering Waver an expansive smile that the other can’t see as anything but condescension. “I suppose it is your brother the prince who tells them of all the wondrous libraries he has seen in foreign lands. Or perhaps your father, the champion of the hunt?”

Waver is brought up short by this question. “I...I don’t know,” he admits. “It’s just something everyone says.”

“Every country is proud of their own keepings,” Iskandar tells him, and turns aside to look out at the walls around them again. “Every land has some treasure to make them valuable, to allow them to contribute to the greatness of a single unified empire. But it’s rarely something those who call themselves kings are willing to see, much less admit to their people. They’re more interested in forming false glory for themselves out of what they already have safe in their hands than in reaching out for the true honor to be found in conquest.”

Waver frowns at Iskandar’s back. “You sure talk a lot about winning for a prisoner.”

Iskandar laughs again. “A temporary inconvenience,” he booms to the books as he takes a step forward towards one of the rows. “I will be free again, whether by politics or power, and it is at such time that I am returned to my own lands that I will return to take yours from the petty men who hold it now.” He reaches out a hand to touch against the spine of one of the books, the contact surprisingly gentle from a man so corded with muscle. “This collection would be a great addition to my own.”

Waver thinks about protesting this completely unfounded self-assurance in the other, but even after hardly a day together he can already see that this line of attack will fall on deaf ears. He heaves a sigh instead, letting his shoulders slump unseen behind Iskandar’s back, and lifts a hand to press against the fast-rising ache at his temples. “If you like books so much why are you so opposed to me being here?”

“Books are an excellent resource,” Iskandar agrees. “You can learn much of a country from its histories and more from its maps.” He drops his hand from the book before him and turns on his heel to face Waver by the doorway as he braces his hands on his hips and frowns attention at the other. “But books are not everything. You cannot gain the experience of battle in a library, nor can you prepare yourself for combat from the pages of a manuscript.”

Waver lifts his chin. “I’m a _mage_ ,” he says, the protest so familiar on his lips that he can track the lilt of it like a mantra. “I fight with magic, not with brute strength.”

“Indeed,” Iskandar rumbles. “Battle mages can devastate a frontline. A single trained man can take out dozens at one blow, if he is skilled and fast enough. And so long as his power holds out.” He takes a step forward over the distance between himself and Waver still scowling at him from the doorway. “What will you do when your mana runs dry in the midst of a battle, princeling? A war will not pause its flow for you to recover yourself, however noble the blood in your veins may be. Without your magic you have no more defense than the strength of your arm and the power of your body.” He lifts his hand from his side to crush bruising force against Waver’s shoulder; Waver stumbles and would fall, he thinks, were it not for the grip against his arm that keeps him upright with no apparent effort from Iskandar at all. Iskandar’s mouth tugs up onto a grin as he keeps his hold. “And you have vanishingly little of either.”

“Let go of me,” Waver snaps, and wrenches hard against Iskandar’s hold to break himself free. He’s pulling with his full strength, almost hanging off the other’s grip, but it’s only when Iskandar lets his hold ease that Waver can pull himself free and into a stumbling motion sideways. He catches himself without quite falling outright to the floor and lifts his gaze to resume glaring at the man before him. “What am I supposed to do, then? You can hardly expect me to hold my own in a match against you.”

The words are sharp, the question intended to cut more than to ask, but Iskandar just throws his head back and laughs as if Waver is making a joke instead of landing a verbal blow. “Indeed not! Even in my own country there are few who could stand against me. Do not take me as your point of comparison, princeling, even ambition will only get you so far.”

Waver grimaces. “Thanks so much.”

Iskandar doesn’t react to the sarcasm on Waver’s tone. Waver’s not even sure he actually heard the other’s words. “But surely you could spare an hour or two from your studies to merit some time at the practice fields. You lack the build for a melee but a bow would give you the means to offer some resistance to the enemy even should your magic fail you. And a dagger would at least give you the honor of a noble defeat in close quarters. You could likely take at least one or two of your foes with you before you fall!”

Waver heaves a sigh. “You’re very encouraging,” he says, and moves to step around the wall of Iskandar’s presence so he can retreat towards the shadows of the library. “It’s not like it matters anyway, you know. We’re not at war with anyone and Kayneth is more interested in diplomacy than in conquest. I’m not going to get any closer to a battlefield than I will to the throne.”

Iskandar hums a low note in the back of his throat. “You are very certain of your country’s path for one so removed from its politics,” he says. “Battles rarely consider the expectations of those who are caught up in them, and wars are not entered into via the sober negotiations of a trade agreement.”

“I know that,” Waver snaps, caught by Iskandar’s words into looking back over his shoulder. Iskandar is still standing by the door, not moving to follow him, but his eyes are fixed on Waver, and what bluff cheer usually lingers against his broad face has given over to a darkly intent gaze. Waver’s skin prickles under that consideration, as if he’s flushing with self-consciousness just for being looked at, and he ducks his head to look away.

“I want to read,” he says, looking at the shelves before him instead of speaking to that steady gaze. “As my bodyguard you will remain here with me for the morning.”

“Hm,” Iskandar offers. “It _has_ been some time since I was allowed access to texts of any kind, and I have yet to truly explore the maps and histories of your land.” He claps his hands together, the sound loud enough that it makes Waver jump and look back over his shoulder in spite of himself to see Iskandar grinning at the shelves around them. “Yes, I think I can make excellent use of these resources. We shall stay here until the lunch hour!” And he moves forward, returning towards the shelves without so much as glancing back at Waver for permission.

Waver can’t help but feel as if he was just allowed to linger rather than the one doing the granting of such. For a moment he thinks about protesting, just to make their respective roles clear; and then he heaves a sigh, and lets his shoulders slump, and turns away to find a corner of the library to lose himself in without even making the effort.

If nothing else, at least he’s getting better at recognizing a futile cause when he sees it.


	7. Options

Waver doesn’t want to like Iskandar.

This is partially a point of pride. Whatever advantage he may have gained in his unexpected request to his half-brother, the man is still a bodyguard appointed by exactly that person who has least reason to like Waver himself, and whom Waver is not overly fond of in turn. Iskandar could be acting as a spy for Kayneth, however unlikely the possibility seems whenever he booms his huge, overwhelming laugh; more than that, as the captive king of another country, he is an opponent to Waver’s own, however easy it may be to forget the stark facts of that. Waver isn’t looking for friendship, and he isn’t the one who demanded the constant presence of a bodyguard; for that alone, he thinks, he would be willing to dig his heels in and despise whoever was appointed to him on principle alone.

The problem is that Iskandar makes that very, very hard to do. Waver has never been particularly good with people -- his attempts at overtures of friendship were so clumsy as a child that he gave them up outright, preferring to take some measure of pride in his misanthropy rather than struggle to become only passable at the social skills that come so easily to others and so hard to his own grasping fingers. His move to the court only exacerbated the problem; the common folk were at least straightforward about not caring for or about him, but the nobles and courtiers will drag a smile onto their faces for an ostensible prince and plot to stab a knife in his back before he’s even turned it to them. Waver is exhausted by the machinations he can barely follow and certainly can’t play at; he had been beginning to think it would be better to keep on as he began, giving up speech entirely in favor of his books until he could simply demand the respect he wants by force instead of by politics. He had given up any hope of finding true companionship within the castle walls, and the broad shoulders of his foreign bodyguard are hardly the thing to convince him otherwise.

Iskandar doesn’t respect him. There’s none of the subservience in him that Waver knows is at least technically due to his formal title; he appears as little impressed by Waver’s position as if the other is still the peasant boy he grew up believing himself to be. But in place of the respect Waver craves or even the obsequiousness he can sometimes force Iskandar offers consideration, the focus of his eyes when Waver is speaking and the attention of his thoughts to what the other has to say. It’s true he argues with this more often than not -- Waver sometimes thinks he’s doing well for himself if he so much as scores a point out of every ten debates they take up -- but even Iskandar’s protests are good-natured, as if he’s working to share knowledge with Waver rather than simply laying bare his ignorance as Kayneth would and has done at every available opportunity. Their conversations feel almost like banter, sometimes, when Waver manages to make a few points enough to draw a crease of thought between Iskandar’s red brows, and Iskandar invariably seems almost more pleased when Waver takes the argument than when his own point holds sway. It makes Waver feel off-balance, as if some principle of life that he has taken for granted since long before his arrival at court is under siege, until he finds himself frowning before he opens his door to let Iskandar’s wide smile into his morning as if adopting self-defense for a battle futile before he has even begun it.

Iskandar wins most of their arguments, anyway. Waver tells himself it’s because of the other’s brute strength, that he abuses the weight of his hand clapping to Waver’s shoulder or smacking at Waver’s back to knock the air from his lungs to end dialogues that he may be losing, but he lacks any kind of real evidence for those casual blows as anything other than the misjudged affection they appear to be. Iskandar listens to Waver’s points when he makes good ones, and outright discards or ignores those he finds foolish, and in the wake of the other’s overwhelming presence Waver finds he has little choice left to him but to follow in his bodyguard’s shadow, as if he is the astonishingly underequipped servant to the broad-shouldered king of a master he is trailing.

That’s why he’s where he is now, in any case. There’s a wind whipping across the palace grounds, strong enough to arc the branches of the trees and grab at the pages of the book Waver has open in his lap as if with a child’s restless fingers; it would be far easier to pay attention to the words before him were he within the walls, ensconced in the peace of the library or the candlelit dim of his own quarters, where he is unlikely to be disturbed except by Kayneth’s irritable tempers. But Iskandar met him this morning with a demand to visit the training grounds, a point that all Waver’s half-hearted protests gained no traction against at all, and in the end Waver thinks he was lucky to lay hands to the book he had back in his own rooms before Iskandar closed one enormous hand around Waver’s wrist and dragged him all but bodily through the halls and out into the chill of approaching winter in the open air. Waver had grimaced at the cold and struggled towards some half-formed protest at being out and about in it, but Iskandar had laughed at his lack of resilience and Waver’s own petulant dignity had served to warm him with irritation for the rest of the walk out to the training grounds. Iskandar had set him free once there, apparently content for once to indulge in his own physical efforts without insisting on Waver’s own, and Waver subsided to a bench against a wall mostly out of the wind and in as much sunlight as he could find and tried to distract himself in the pages of his book.

“You’re wasting an opportunity,” Iskandar calls from the middle of the training grounds. Waver would ignore him if he could, but the other man’s voice carries as if it has a direct line into his thoughts as much as through the open air, and even if he grimaces frustration down at the page of the book before him he’s not getting any more reading done for pretending inattention than looking up to turn his glare onto Iskandar instead. The other man has his back to Waver at the moment as he moves through a sequence of steps with a slow, studied grace; it would look almost like a dance, for how deliberately he moves, except for the weight of the enormous two-handed practice sword he is swinging to follow in the wake of his motions. The muscle across his shoulders flexes as he lifts the weapon and swings it into a wide arc, letting the momentum of the action bring him around so he can turn his head to see Waver watching from the bench. “Once winter has arrived you won’t have the chance to have practice bouts out in the open air.”

“I don’t intend to have practice matches at _all_ ,” Waver snaps with more of an edge on his voice than he entirely intended to put there. “How many times do I have to tell you, I’m studying magic, not combat.”

“And I keep telling you magic will do you no good against an enemy’s blade when you are too tired to wield it.” Iskandar takes a step backwards without looking where he’s moving as he brings his sword into another long sweep of potential damage. “Physical strength is as important as mental fortitude, princeling.”

Waver rolls his eyes as an easier way to end this particular well-worn conversation than bothering with repeating the same protests he’s been offering for the last week and a half. “What are _you_ doing anyway?” he asks with a jerk of his chin towards the blunt practice sword in Iskandar’s grip. “I didn’t think prisoners were allowed weapons.”

“Ah, but I am not a prisoner, am I?” Iskandar brings the sword in his hands back across, cutting over the path he has already cleaved through the air before him; the motion is as graceful as what went before, but his smile is a little tighter than usual, his eyes a little darker. “I reside here as an honored guest of the royal family while negotiations are handled on my behalf by my kingdom.”

Waver gives him a flat look. “You don’t need to tell Kayneth’s lies for him, you know.”

Iskandar booms a laugh and rocks back onto his heels as he lets his practice weapon fall heavy to his side, his deliberate training stance abandoned in favor of full-throated amusement that rumbles in his chest and shakes his shoulders. When he looks back to Waver his smile is far easier, without the unusual strain that clung to his expression before. “Well said, princeling. It is good to know the intrigue of the court has not overcome your sincerity yet.”

Waver’s shoulders tense to hunch him forward over his book as his face warms with something very like a flush. “It’s only because I lack the polish of court,” he says. “No _real_ prince would be so blunt.”

“No,” Iskandar says. “Do not convince complexity for ability. Too often shadows are used to mask weakness, especially in those who can least afford to show it.” He strides forward off the field, stepping directly over the low fence that marks out the boundary instead of bothering with cutting to the side and making use of the gate built into that same. Waver is sitting down, and braced by past experience for what’s coming, but the pat at his shoulder still feels like it rattles his teeth in his skull and nearly takes him down to sprawl across the bench instead of sitting upright upon it. “It is only with an honest admission of a situation that a true plan of conquest can be found.” He beams down at Waver without lifting his hand from the other’s shoulder. “I’d rather be bodyguard to a bastard prince willing to face the truths of the world than offer allegiance to a king who hides his true actions behind pretty words.”

Waver can feel his blush spill flame across his cheeks; he ducks to hide from Iskandar’s direct gaze, more discomfited by this unexpected praise than by any of the arguments he has lost over the last few days. There’s silence for a minute while Iskandar’s hand lingers at Waver’s shoulder and Waver tried to find coherency from the pressure weighting at his chest; finally he manages to loosen the knot in his throat enough to force words free, even if they come out somewhat more strangled than he fully intended them to. “That still doesn’t mean you’re going to get me to pick up that stupid sword of yours.”

Iskandar’s laugh resonates down Waver’s spine as the other lifts his hand from pressing to Waver’s shoulder. “I think the sword is more likely to wield you than for you to get the blade off the ground.” He swings the weight in question up and across his shoulders one-handed; he doesn’t even have the decency to look like he’s struggling with it, when Waver casts his gaze up from under the weight of his hair to frown at the other. “You could manage a bow well enough, though. Has your loving brother seen fit to provide you with lessons in any kind of weaponry at all?”

“Half-brother,” Waver corrects, his frown going darker. “I don’t think His Highness cares much at all about anything I do, so long as it’s out of the way of his royal self.”

“Ahh,” Iskandar says. “Then you have that most generous of gifts available to royalty.” He grins at Waver before him as the other stares up at him uncomprehendingly. “You are free!”

Waver huffs a laugh. He means it to be skeptical, but it goes warmer than he intends and comes out almost amused. “Except for the expectations of my position, and the irritation of a bodyguard I cannot be rid of.”

Iskandar laughs. “It’s more than many have,” he says. He takes a step backwards towards the fence around the grounds without turning to look away from Waver. “I suppose you will choose to spend it rereading your favorite spellbook there?”

“I shall,” Waver tells him. “It’s my royal prerogative, is it not?”

Iskandar lifts one broad shoulder into a shrug. “It is indeed,” he says, and reaches behind him to brace a hand at the top of the fence as he turns to step back into the cleared ground within. “Inform me when you decide to take advantage of the options available to you.”

“Don’t hold your breath!” Waver shouts, but Iskandar just laughs and lifts a hand to wave this aside before he turns away to resume the practice exercises he has been running through. Waver watches him for a moment, his focus drawn by the glint of sunlight off the length of the sword and the certain weight of Iskandar’s footfalls as he steps into wide arcs of movement; and then the other steps forward to turn into profile for Waver’s sight, and Waver drops his gaze down to the page of the book before him to resume his attempt at studying.

The wind is still catching at the pages under his hold, but he doesn’t feel the bite of it through the weight of his tunic nearly as sharply as he did a few minutes ago.


	8. Certain

“I don’t even know what it is you want to see,” Waver complains, speaking loudly so his voice will carry to Iskandar over his shoulder without him needing to turn around to face the other. “There are trees over there. There are hedges here. It’s all the same the whole way around the palace.”

“So you say,” Iskandar rumbles in the usual cheerful tone that makes him sound like he might actually be persuadable in a way Waver knows from an unfortunate plethora of personal experience he is not at all. “It’s still pleasant to look at them myself.”

“Pleasant for _you_ ,” Waver grumbles. He already has his arms crossed over his chest; now he tightens his shoulders to add greater force to the shiver that is not so much invented as slightly exaggerated. “I’d much rather be inside, where it’s _warm_. If you wanted to see the garden so badly we could have found some windows on the higher levels. Wouldn’t it be a better view from up above anyway?”

“There is advantage to knowing the lay of the land before you’re tread it,” Iskandar agrees, sounding more as if Waver is a promising student than trying to pick a fight with him. “But nothing can match hands-on experience. Whenever possible it is better to fight on territory you know well and have traversed yourself.”

“Great,” Waver grumbles. “I’ll keep that in mind the next time I’m planning to fight a war in a palace courtyard.” There’s a fresh gust of wind from over the top edge of the palace walls; this time Waver doesn’t have to exaggerate the tooth-rattling chill that runs through him. “As long as I don’t freeze to death first.”

“I keep telling you you are too frail,” Iskandar says. Waver is expecting the weight of the enormous hand that claps between his shoulderblades and it means he only goes stumbling forward a pair of steps to regain his footing instead of toppling to the ground outright. There’s not many people to see him -- other than himself and Iskandar, there’s just a single dark-garbed figure wandering through the far corner of the garden -- but Waver’s still glad to save himself from bruising his knees and palms, even if there’s no protecting the ache at his back from the familiar impact of the other’s hand. “You must eat more! None of this skipping breakfast and having a pastry for lunch. You’ll never make a warrior on meals like that.”

“I’m _fine_ ,” Waver protests. “I eat a perfectly reasonable amount.”

“Then it is a lack of physical exertion,” Iskandar informs him without so much as pausing for breath. “You could run through the garden paths instead of this sedate stroll. It would even warm you against the cool of the breeze!”

Waver snorts. “So would a _fire_ ,” he tells Iskandar, looking back over his shoulder to frown in answer to the grin the other is wearing. “And a cup of tea. Are you sure you don’t want to go back inside? We could get out that old book of geography you were poring over yesterday instead of wandering the gardens in a hurricane.”

“This is a refreshing breeze, nothing more!” Iskandar tells him. “If this is too much for you next time I shall bring extra blankets to wrap around you until you are a comfortable as a babe in arms.”

“That sounds more pleasant than freezing to death,” Waver says. They’re approaching the end of the winding path they’ve been pacing along; Waver steps out onto the edge of the wider route that cuts the gardens into quarters and turns sharply to the left to form out a perimeter around the square they’ve been walking through. “Hurry up, let’s head back already.”

“Not yet,” Iskandar says. When Waver pauses to look back the other man is pointing in the other direction, his head turned to consider the rest of the maze-like hedges that surround them. “I still desire to see what’s around to the west.”

“More plants,” Waver tells him. “And more cold. Come on, I want to go back.”

“No,” Iskandar says, and takes a step to walk away in the direction he’s indicated. “There’s no need to head back to the castle until the midday meal, and we’ve hours yet until then.”

“There _is_ need,” Waver snaps, and lunges forward to grab against Iskandar’s arm and hold him back. This succeeds mostly in dragging him in the other’s wake for a moment before Iskandar pauses to look back at him, but at least he does stop moving. Waver lets his hold go and falls back, standing as straight as he can to gain the full force of his height as he braces his hands at his hips. “I wish to return. You are meant to be my bodyguard, are you not?”

“You would spend all your days ensconced in your books of magic,” Iskandar tells him. There’s no heat to the words; he sounds more amused than anything else, judging from the curve of a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “All study and none of the practice.” He lifts an arm overhead and looks up to consider the sky. “What good is your knowledge if you never use it?”

“I use it,” Waver protests. Iskandar’s attention drops to his face, meeting his gaze for a moment before swinging up and over Waver’s shoulder. “I _will_ use it. I’m going to become a mage, a proper one.” Iskandar’s not watching Waver but his smile is fading, giving way to the slack weight of inattention; Waver frowns harder and lifts his chin to summon what self-confidence he can. “We’ll see how far your strength takes you against a barrage of spells.”

Iskandar looks less than impressed by this; in fact he doesn’t look to have heard Waver at all. He’s still gazing over the other’s shoulder, his attention fixed on the alignment of greenery that spreads out in deliberate lines around the palace; Waver’s jaw sets on frustration, that even the one person who has ever bothered to truly look at him can be so easily distracted by nothing more than a simple garden. “Are you even--”

“ _Down_ ,” Iskandar says, grating the word in a tone Waver has never heard from him before. Waver’s eyes go wide, adrenaline freezing him in place before he can even make sense of the other’s speech, but it doesn’t matter. Iskandar is swinging his arm up and across to slam against Waver’s chest with the flat of his forearm, and Waver is knocked clear off his feet and out of his breath by the impact. He doesn’t have a chance to catch himself, can’t make sense of what’s just happened; he lands heavily against one of the hedges, crushing leaves and snapping branches as he throws his hands out to stall his movement. His palms skid on the gravel, tearing on what feels more like heat than pain for the first gasping moment; and then there’s a sweep of movement and Waver lifts his head to see Iskandar jerk back and away from the arc of a sword cutting through the open air where Waver’s neck was a moment before.

Waver’s whole body goes chill with sudden, horrified panic. He can’t make sense of what he’s seeing, can’t move, can’t even fill his lungs from that sudden impact that emptied him of all his air at once. The dark figure at the far side of the garden is far closer now; they’re wrapped in black, head and body and even their hands swathed in the color until they look like a living shadow. It’s only the sweep of their sword that gleams as they draw it through the air in a clean curve on the return from the blow that was meant for Waver; and Waver looks to Iskandar, too slow to help, too slow to speak, unable to do anything but turn his head as the killing blow comes down towards the other. But Iskandar is moving fast, much faster than Waver thought he could, faster than Waver’s ever seen from anyone except the figure in black; he steps to the side, shifting out of the way of the blade as if it’s a feather drifting on the wind, before he ducks in low and comes in suddenly close. Waver’s heart seizes in his chest at the proximity, at how frighteningly near Iskandar is coming to the source of the attack, but the sword is still caught in the momentum of its second missed blow as Iskandar turns to the side and slams the full weight of his body entirely against the attacker’s chest. The figure is knocked back as thoroughly as Waver was, grunting a sharp exhale at the impact as they fall, and the other pair land heavily against the pebbles of the path, Iskandar’s fall cushioned by landing entirely atop the other. The sword clatters to the gravel, fallen free of the attacker’s grip, and Waver finds the space to gasp a breath and struggle free of his green prison, at least enough to fall forward onto his knees and reach for the dropped weapon. He cuts his thumb at the edge, slicing deep against the base as he grabs with an unwary grip at the blade and not the flat, but he doesn’t feel the pain any more than he feels the raw ache of his scraped palms. He drags the sword towards himself, moving with more desperation than grace; it’s only once he has the hilt safely in his own blood-slick grip that he realizes that their attacker hasn’t moved since Iskandar’s attack, to reach for their weapon or to so much as lift their head. Iskandar is getting up, breathing hard but apparently unharmed; Waver can’t figure out which of the other two he should be paying more attention to.

“Are they--” His throat tenses, his hands tighten on the hilt in his hands. “Did you kill them?”

Iskandar doesn’t look back at him. He reaches out, laying hands to the dark hood wrapped close around the other’s face so he can drag it free. The fabric slides off easily enough to bare the face beneath, eyes shut and expression slack, and Waver can feel his entire body turn to ice as Iskandar pushes their attacker’s head to the side to consider the point of impact.

“He’ll live,” Iskandar says, letting the man’s head fall back to the gravel pathway again. “Or at least it won’t be my hand that kills him.” He pushes to his feet, straightening to his full height as he looks down at the man lying still and unconscious before him. “Kingdoms are rarely forgiving to those who follow the path of assassins.”

Waver presses his lips together and swallows with as much force as he can muster. His throat feels as weak as his limbs, as if all his muscles have turned to jelly, as if in a moment he’s going to drop the sword still in his grip onto the path beneath him. He shakes his head, even though Iskandar isn’t looking at him. “He’s not an assassin.”

Iskandar barks a laugh. It’s colder than anything Waver has ever heard from him before; when he glances back over his shoulder there’s no sign of a smile at his lips, nothing but stark disbelief in his gaze. “Do you have a different definition of such here?” He lifts a hand to gesture to the sword angled out in Waver’s struggling hold. “An underhanded attack on the life of one of the royal family is exactly--”

“That’s not what I mean.” Waver’s voice jumps louder than he intends it to but he doesn’t think it’s the volume that cuts Iskandar’s words off so short; he’s all but shouted at the other before, and it hasn’t had the stifling effect whatever edge is on his tone now carries. Iskandar closes his mouth, falling to silence as he stares at Waver; Waver forces himself through another swallow, although it doesn’t do much to moisten his throat.

“He’s not an assassin,” he repeats, and lets his gaze fall to the face of the man lying on the path, to the tangle of wavy hair around his face, the shape of the mouth made much of by the court ladies, the dark mole underneath the lashes of one eye. “I know him. That’s my brother’s bodyguard.”

There’s a long moment of silence. It’s so quiet Waver can hear the sound of the wind in the branches of the trees, can hear the wet of his blood dripping from his cut thumb to stain the gravel under his knees to crimson. His whole body is shaking, although he doesn’t feel cold anymore; it’s as if he’s become one of the leaves in those winter-chilled trees, to be rattled by the breeze without feeling it directly. His hands ache. It’s the only thing he can feel clearly, the radiance of pain throbbing in time with his heart still thudding dully in his chest.

Iskandar takes a breath. “Your brother trusts this man with his life?”

Waver ducks his head. “He’ll do anything Kayneth tells him to do” and it’s as he’s putting the words to the statement that he feels the force of it, the blow of truth crushing against him with more force even than what Iskandar’s shove offered. Waver lifts his eyes to Iskandar’s, hoping for some kind of answer, for some kind of reprieve; and he sobs over an inhale, his hands losing their grip to drop the sword in his hands to clatter to the gravel at last as unavoidable certainty tightens around him like a noose.

He never thought the dark of sympathy in those kind eyes would be so hard to face.


	9. Delay

Waver hadn’t thought it was possible for his life to invert so quickly.

He has some experience with this already, or at least more than he thinks many people ever have. He’s already learned first-hand how quickly the structure of his life and his identity and his future can be built up with just a few words from the right person before the right audience; he’s spent the last months discovering exactly how far that runs, and what it doesn’t extend to in the absence of the authority held by the king himself. He has spent weeks wondering if it wouldn’t have been for the best to remain in the comfortable boredom of the farmhouse where he spent his childhood, with the peace of a quiet life to lull him into complacency if not quite contentment. It’s only now, with the structure of his new life as shattered as a glass window dropped onto that same gravel pathway where he and Iskandar left his would-be assassin, that Waver recognizes the full weight of the comforts so implicit to his position that he has learned to take them for granted as quickly as they are offered.

Nothing is simple now. Any control Waver might have had over the course of his own life is gone, scattered like leaves in a gusting breeze; even his ostensible dominance over the man at his side is so entirely stripped away that he can’t find even a token protest for the hand gripping at the back of his neck with force enough to make a demand of even that simple hold Iskandar has on him. Waver has made no decisions at all since that moment in the garden pathway, when he and Iskandar stared at each other over the unconscious form of the guard whose very dedication to his lord proves the full weight of the betrayal they are facing; it was Iskandar who surged to his feet and laid hand to the back of Waver’s neck to all but drag him out of the garden and away from the windows of the palace, where the dark indentations into the smooth stone stare down at them as if they might be hiding dozens more assassins with weapons more suited for distance than the sword Waver’s strengthless fingers dropped to leave at their attacker’s feet. For all Waver knows Iskandar could have been planning to steer him into the throne room itself, to offer to sell his life rather than continuing to serve the role of bodyguard laid on him by an ignorant prince’s whim; but it’s the storehouses they head for, rather than the palace, and when Iskandar urges Waver through the door he keeps his body angled before the other’s until he’s glared attention into all the shadowy corners of the space around them. Waver stays still where Iskandar’s hold places him, caught in the shadow of the other’s broad shoulders and listening to the rhythm of his own heartbeat thudding in his chest; it seems strange, that his heart should be beating so hard when his thoughts are so distant, as if floating across the surface of a peaceful stream. He’s noticing strange things, like the smell of oiled metal in the air, the line of Iskandar’s beard reaching back against the side of his neck, the strain in the thumb bearing down hard against the line of his spine. Iskandar keeps them there for a moment, pressed into silence alongside the door; it’s only once he’s reassured himself that there is no one within the space but their own selves that he lets Waver go and steps away from the entrance.

“Stay there,” he orders, and Waver doesn’t even think to protest for how much certain command there is under the other’s voice. He stays, held in place as firmly by Iskandar’s demand as if his feet have melded to the floor, and Iskandar strides away into the dim-lit structure around them. There are bins of weapons arrayed in neat rows, lances and axes and javelins carefully cleaned before being placed in storage; Iskandar strides past all of them without looking, making directly for the heaviest of the swords available, near the back corner of the space. Waver watches him without thinking about anything at all; it’s only when Iskandar is belting on a scabbard for one of the heaviest two-handed swords available that he even considers the other’s status as a prisoner, that the thought that Iskandar may not be allowed weapons at all occurs to him. He opens his mouth to ask the obvious question; and then closes it again, and his fist as well, to tighten his fingers around the clotting cut at his thumb from the blade of a sword intended to take his life and Iskandar’s too, if needed.

Iskandar cuts a lengthier path back than he needs to, sweeping around the outside edge of the space to make for the bows lining the wall. He’s less careful about this selection than he was with the sword; he seizes upon a waiting quiver and a bow almost as he strides past, only pausing to collect a few of the coiled bowstrings that are set alongside the racks for the bowstaves themselves. Waver watches him without comprehension until Iskandar has returned to the door and holds out the bow and the quiver to him.

“Take these.” Waver reaches out in obedience to that tone before he understands the meaning; Iskandar lets go of the bow so suddenly Waver nearly drops the weight and has to clutch hard enough at the wood that the cut at his palm pulls and cracks open to spill another rush of blood. “You’ll need some way to defend yourself.”

Waver shakes his head. “I can’t shoot,” he protests, but Iskandar is already moving past him to reach for the door and ease it open by an inch so he can fix his attention on the grounds outside and gauge the presence of possible attackers. Waver turns towards him and holds the quiver and bow out in front of him as a helpless plea. “Iskandar, I can do nothing with these.”

“You will learn.” Iskandar looks to him for a moment and jerks his head towards Waver’s shoulder. “Brace it across your back for now. I will teach you with it later.”

“Later?” Waver says. He lifts the bowstaff over his shoulder and fumbles with it for a minute before he can get the weight steady behind him. “What _later_? We’re being hunted down by the royal guards themselves, they’re bound to catch us.”

“That’s why we’re getting out of the palace,” Iskandar tells him. He reaches out to replace his hold on Waver’s neck and urge him forward. “So we may survive to fight another day.” Waver stumbles out of the storehouse, drawn into motion by Iskandar’s grip even as his shoulders tighten with the panicked fear of an attack, of even a casual glance landing on the too-recognizable form of his own rich clothes and his looming bodyguard, but there’s no shout, no slice of arrows cutting through the air, and Iskandar is moving them on to the next storage space with that same steady, unhesitating pace that carries them across the palace grounds faster than Waver would have thought possible. He comes in at once this time, apparently less concerned with the possibility of interruption in what Waver identifies as a storehouse for clothing and the light leather armor the palace guards wear, and this time he takes Waver with him, telling him to “Stay close behind me” before striding forward into the shadows at such a pace that Waver has to jog to keep up.

Iskandar moves fast. It’s hard to believe he’s never been here before, although Waver can’t imagine he would have had occasion to make his way through the hanging cloaks and well-cared for armor in his position as a prisoner, when his role as a bodyguard didn’t merit it. But he moves as if aiming precisely for the items he lays claim to, from a vest of heavy leather for himself to a cloak dark and long enough to entirely cover Waver from crown to heel. He pulls the hood of that up to hide Waver’s face; Waver is too happy to press himself into the shadows and trail in Iskandar’s wake as the other lays claim to a cloak of his own and a few of the bedrolls lashed into neat rolls for easier carrying. The straps are intended to be slung over the shoulders of a horse, or strapped to the edge of a saddle, but Iskandar loops them in and around each other to make a single weight before wrapping the straps around his shoulders and settling the burden against the broad line of his back. Just one would be enough to put Waver off-balance and to keep him from laying hands to his weapon; even bundled together, they don’t appear to discomfit Iskandar at all besides forming a telltale rise under the weight of his cloak.

“Don’t we need supplies if we’re leaving the palace?” Waver asks, as Iskandar settles the weight at his back with a sigh of satisfaction. “Food, or water?”

Iskandar shakes his head. “The only chance we have is to get past the gates before the alarm goes up that the first attack failed,” he says. “We don’t have time for anything but the essentials. The forests will provide us with food enough, and water we will have in abundance in the rivers.” He squares his shoulders and turns to stride back towards the front of the storehouse. “It would be better with horses. But there are always stablehands about, and it’s impossible to know how far information has travelled. We’ll have to manage afoot.”

Waver drops into a jog to pace Iskandar to the door of the storehorse. “Where are we going to go?” he asks. “There will be guards at the gates, surely.”

“Certainly,” Iskandar says. “But the fewer people are informed of your brother’s intentions, the safer he will be. If we’re lucky no one but his closest servants will know, and if his man hasn’t been found yet he won’t realize the secret is out.”

Waver thinks of the familiar, handsome face of his brother’s personal bodyguard, slack with unconsciousness but still with breath shifting in his dark-wrapped chest. He frowns at Iskandar’s back as the other slides the door open and leans close to press an eye near to the crack to judge their surroundings. “Why didn’t you kill him?”

Iskandar huffs a laugh at a far softer volume than what he usually offers. “Why didn’t you?” he asks. “It was your hand upon the sword, in the end.” He looks back over his shoulder; Waver can feel his cheeks coloring and ducks his head to hide from the weight of the other’s stare in the shadow of his cloak.

A hand comes out to touch at his shoulder. “You did right,” Iskandar says. His voice is dampened to a rumble by the need for secrecy; Waver can feel the force of it thrum through that hand pressing to his shoulder. “A true ruler doesn’t kill unless he must. Conquest is taken through willing surrender, not bloodshed.” His hand tightens at Waver’s shoulder to press comfort against the other’s arm. “Come. We must make the gate.” And he pulls, and Waver follows without giving voice to any kind of further protest.

The grounds are largely empty. Waver is grateful to that, both to the quiet that has left them little audience and to those few servants and guards that pass them by at some distance to prove the castle has not yet taken on the silence of the prison it is beginning to seem. Waver’s heart is still rattling in his chest, speeding fast enough now that he can hardly breathe for the pressure against his lungs; every shift of a shadow makes him jump with the fear of someone approaching until Iskandar braces his hold at the back of Waver’s head and rumbles a demand for him to hold still and look less suspicious. Even then, Waver spends the whole of the casually slow walk across the grounds with his heart pounding and his head still caught in that strange, fuzzy confusion that has held him since the interlude on the garden path. Everything is happening too fast, things changing too quickly for him to make sense of them as they give way and reorient around him, until he’s startled by the shift at his neck guiding him to a halt just shy of the smallest gate out of the palace, the eastern entrance watched by only a pair of desultory guards.

“Who goes there?” one of them asks, straightening from his slouch against the smooth stones of the wall around the palace. “Are you guests of the palace?”

“We are,” Iskandar says. His voice is a deep rumble from the shadows of the cloak drawn up to hide his face and some part of the crimson of his hair and beard; to Waver’s ears that tone alone seems like it must be enough to lay his companion’s true identity unmistakably bare to the men before them. “And we intend to see an end to our visit. Will you let us pass?”

The guards exchange a look. Waver can see the suspicion in them even from his position behind Iskandar’s shoulders; his fear is only the more justified when one of them falls back and reaches to lay hand to the sword sheathed at his hip. The other turns back to face them, but there’s more tension in his shoulders now, and a cast of shadow on his voice that wasn’t there before.

“We must know who you are,” he declares. “It’s more than our lives are worth to let a stranger pass these gates. Put back your cloak and that of your companion and we will make our judgment there.”

Iskandar rumbles in the back of his throat. “My companion--”

“Judges his own doings,” Waver says, speaking clearly so his voice will carry over even the resonant force of Iskandar’s own. All three of the others look to him; he steps forward at once, lifting his hand to push his hood back even as Iskandar hisses and reaches to his shoulder. The guards rock back, startled by their obvious recognition of his features; Waver meets the gaze of the first man, the nearer one. “I am His Royal Highness Prince Waver and I wish to venture out of the city walls with my personal bodyguard. Will you stand against my royal prerogative?”

“Your Highness,” the guard says, mouthing over the words as if by rote. But his knees aren’t bending, he’s not ducking into a bow, and Waver is afraid to look away from the darkness in the eyes fixed on his own. “Didn’t expect to see you here.”  
“It _is_ him,” the second guard hisses, in the tone of a whisper but with the force of a shout. “The prince. The bastard.”

“It is,” the first man agrees. His shoulders are angled away from Waver, his weight tipped back strangely on one heel. “There’s no mistake.” His shoulder shifts, his arm moves; and then he’s coming forward at once, moving so fast Waver hardly has time to see the glint of light off the long blade of the dagger in the hand he had hidden behind him. Waver hisses a breath and brings an arm up in a useless, instinctive attempt to protect himself from the edge of the blade now arcing towards his chest, and a hand comes down at his shoulder, fingers clutching hard to brace him steady as the long blade of a heavy sword cleaves through the air alongside him. The point cuts right through the guard’s armor, breaking through even the thick of the leather as smoothly as a knife slicing through butter; the guard’s fingers go slack on the handle of his dagger, his hand falls to clutch uselessly at the sword that has just run him through. He stares up over Waver’s shoulder for a moment, his mouth open and eyes wide as he gapes at Iskandar’s overwhelming presence, and then Iskandar yanks his sword free and the guard collapses to the ground as if his knees have given way even as Iskandar heaves the heavy sword up and around to catch the incoming blow of the second guard one-handed. The force is more than the other man is braced for; it knocks his sword up and towards his shoulder as he stumbles, trying to fall back and still retain his footing, and Iskandar’s weapon bears down and diagonally to bite deep into the man’s chest. The second guard’s mouth works, his throat strains over a horrible gurgling sound, and then he falls to join the first in spilling his lifeblood over the ground.

Waver stands locked where he stood for the threat of that first attack, his eyes wide and his skin going hot and cold in waves. The second man is lying still on the ground, his expression slack with the weight of his quicker death; the first is still rasping over inhales, pressing crimson hands uselessly to the gaping wound in his middle. Waver can see the haze in his eyes, can see rational thought drain from the man’s face as instinct for survival strives to cling to life, to hold back the spectre of death for another moment longer. Waver’s throat goes tight, his stomach churns on sudden, violent nausea as he chokes over the pressure in his throat; and then a shadow falls over him, a hand catches at the back of his head, and he’s being pulled in to press close against the warmth of a broad chest and the rhythm of a heart pounding steady on the other side of leather armor.

“Don’t watch.” Iskandar’s voice is steady, as even as if he hasn’t just killed two men in defense of Waver’s own life; but there’s a weight to it, an absolute demand for obedience that has Waver’s eyes shutting even where he’s pressed against the barrier of Iskandar’s chest. “You don’t need to see this.”

“I do,” Waver protests, but his voice is weak and shaky and the words sound like they’re being forced past sobs. “It’s because of me they’re dead.”

“They would have killed you.” Waver can feel the sound of Iskandar’s voice rumbling in his chest, like it’s spilling into him from the contact of his forehead against the other’s body more than through the ringing in his ears. “It’s the price of battle.”

Waver hiccups on a breath. “Idiot,” he chokes out. “Don’t you want me to become a warrior?”

Iskandar’s hand slides up into his hair, his fingers shifting to stroke through the strands. “You will,” he says. “But not today.” His hand draws down to smooth against the back of Waver’s neck and brace the other steady. “Shut your eyes for now, princeling.”

Waver sobs an inhale, his lashes going wet with the spill of tears he can’t hold back as his breathing catches into helpless, gasping sobs; but he keeps his eyes shut, even as his cheeks go wet with tears, and when Iskandar’s hand urges him to movement he follows the other’s guidance out of the palace gates and into freedom.


	10. Goals

The interlude at the palace gate is the last of its kind. Waver had been afraid of more bloodshed, of being caught again in the strange syrup-speed of combat where his own life can only be purchased at the expense of others’; but Iskandar’s steady grip steers him to the shadows of the city, and through the winding path of the streets, and they emerge out onto the road leading away from the palace without so much as an exchange of words between them and any of the inhabitants of said city. Waver looks back, once, when they’re nearly at the border of the town; the palace stands tall above even the city that he found so bustling on his first arrival, looming with a presence that he noticed even on his first visit but underlined, now, with a weight he hadn’t felt then. He feels the shadow of it like eyes on his back, as if it’s an extension of Kayneth himself peering out into the dark at his hated half-brother, and he’s happy to turn his head aside and hide himself in what disguise the cloak around his shoulders can offer him from the dangers that come with recognition.

Iskandar doesn’t slow as they leave the city limits. Waver had thought they might pause for a rest, or at least to collect themselves and speak at somewhat greater length as to their plans, beyond the basic goal of not-dying; but the larger man keeps up his ground-swallowing strides without any sign of slowing, even as Waver can feel the hurry aching in his legs and burning effort across his shoulders. Iskandar resheathed his sword at some point, while Waver was still fighting with the sour of nausea at the back of his tongue and trying to push the thought of blank staring eyes from his mind; it hangs under his cloak, now, half-hidden by the shadows of falling night although he makes no real effort to keep it covered. Waver wonders what they must look like, to anyone who glimpses them from a distance or who might pass them on the road, at a busier time of the day: a man enormous enough to dwarf Waver’s adult height to the frame of a child, armed in well-made if plain leather and with an enormous sword sweeping along at his side with every step he takes. Waver feels his own uncertainty the more keenly, from the unstrung bow he doesn’t know how to use to the stumbling exhaustion of his steps to the tension hunching him forward into suspicious panic, until he thinks anyone who saw him must know at once what a sham he is: of a warrior, of a prince, even of the grown man he wants so much to be. He has nothing left to him, nothing but debt to offer to the man who has twice saved his life in the last dozen hours; the thought is bitter on his tongue, enough to dry even the churn of his stomach to a hollowness too much for him even to feel it as pain. His footsteps slow, dragging through the dust of the road with his lack of strength to lift them, and when a rock finally catches at the toe of his boot and sends him stumbling forward he stops moving as he catches himself, locking his knees into immobility and tightening his shoulders so Iskandar must stop or drag him bodily alongside him.

For a moment the latter option seems the more likely. Iskandar has kept a hand at Waver’s shoulder, the weight more guidance than force, but he’s shifted to the back of the other’s neck as Waver’s steps have slowed, tightening his grip enough to provide a point of support for the other’s unsteady footing. As Waver’s feet draw to a halt Iskandar’s hold tightens to push him forward, as if the other has forgotten their goal and just needs urging to return to it; it’s only when Waver reaches up to push against Iskandar’s arm and urge the other’s grip loose that Iskandar pauses to look back at him, turning to gaze at his companion even as he lets his hand fall to his side.

“You have to slow down,” Waver tells him, aware that his voice is breaking on petulance but utterly unable to even attempt to hold it back. His chest is aching with emotion and exertion too closely interlinked for him to even think of separating them; when he gasps a breath the sound rasps in his throat until it sounds almost like a sob. “I can’t keep up with you like this.”

Iskandar rumbles a laugh. It’s quieter than his amusement often seemed within the palace; Waver doesn’t know if it’s the open air that is providing such a dampening effect or if it’s in deference to their obvious need for secrecy that the other has softened the blow of the sound. “I forget how unaccustomed you are to a soldier’s life,” he says. “You should have said something before.” He turns to gesture out into the velvet darkness of the night, uninterrupted by anything but patches of greater shadow in clusters against the horizon. “If we can make the forest we can spare the light for a fire and sleep warmer for it.”

“And then what?” Waver asks. “Wander the forests and wait for Kayneth to forget about me? Take up a life of banditry with one sword and a handful of arrows to our name?”

Iskandar snorts. “You’re not much suited to that,” he says, and then, before Waver can actually give voice to the irrational flare of hurt that hits him, “No more am I. The forest is just the nearest protection on our path, and we’ll travel farther tomorrow for a night’s rest.”

“Travel _where_?” Waver’s voice is cracked wide open past any help; he can feel tears in the back of his throat but he can’t even collect himself enough to care, at the moment, that his eyes are overflowing to trail heat across his cheeks. “Where are we _going_? You’ve been dragging me through the city and out along this road for hours but I don’t know where you’re taking me in the first place.”

Iskandar reaches out to touch his hand to Waver’s shoulder. The contact is deliberately gentle, rather than the forceful hold he’s been offering, but even so Waver feels his legs trembling like he might be about to collapse outright under the weight. “We’re going somewhere safe,” he says, his voice soft and humming with as much gentleness as Waver has ever heard from him. “Just because one kingdom has turned on you does not mean all doors are now shut.”

“How do you know?” Waver chokes out. “Maybe we’ll be met with the same welcome there as we found here.”

Iskandar shakes his head. “Never,” he says, with all the resonant certainty of a doting husband affirming the faithfulness of a beloved wife. “Where we go will always have its gates open for its king.”

Waver lifts his head to look up into Iskandar’s face. The night is dark, after the full fading of sunset and before the moon has yet climbed to cast pale light across their surroundings; Iskandar’s eyes look darker in the shadow of his brows, his expression cast into a regal distance as if his face has been carved from stone instead of granted the mobility of human warmth Waver has so often seen in it. For a moment Waver can see the self-assurance that granted the other man the certainty to cut through a pair of enemies on his way to secret a second son out of the protections of a palace; he can see the strength that took a mocking assignment and made it truth, the honor to which he owes his life twice over, and he can see, for the span of a heartbeat, the king that Iskandar has always claimed to be.

“Your home,” he says, in a slightly steadier voice than what he offered before. Iskandar ducks his head into a calm nod. “We’re going to go back to your kingdom?”

“You will be safe there,” Iskandar tells him evenly. “I will guarantee as much to any guest of my home.”

Waver’s mouth twitches. “Like you were a guest here?”

Iskandar shakes his head. “You will be a true guest,” he says. “With the freedom to leave or stay as you see fit.” He leans in closer towards Waver, the motion granting weight to his words even beyond what is already offered by the sound of his voice. “And if you wish it you shall join me in my conquest of your brother’s kingdom.”

Waver does smile at that, even if it’s shaky against his lips. “You’re going to take the throne from Kayneth and give it to a bastard second son?”

Iskandar shrugs. “Birth order has no bearing on aptitude for rule,” he declares. “Any more than lineage does. The poorest farmer could prove a greater leader than the highest born prince.” He claps his hand against Waver’s back; the weight of it is more encouraging than Waver expected. “Even you would be a far greater leader than your miserable half-brother.”

Waver snorts. “I appreciate the vote of confidence,” he says, but he is feeling better, even insofar as he can put a sharp edge against the words at his lips. He straightens his shoulders under Iskandar’s touch, feeling a little less like he’s bracing against the blow of an arrow hitting him from some unseen assassin, and when he takes a step forward along the road Iskandar moves to follow him at a slightly slower pace than he was offering before.

They walk together in silence for a half-dozen strides; then Waver lifts his head and clears his throat to speak. “How far away is this empire of yours?”

“Some weeks’ travel,” Iskandar offers at once. “We’ll hunt for food the first few nights and look for some supplies at the first town we can find.”

“ _Weeks_?” Waver repeats, in a more shrill tone than he intended. “And we’re walking the whole way?”

“Horses will be more trouble to get and care for than they’ll help us,” Iskandar tells him without pausing in his forward stride. “And it’ll be easier to keep ourselves fed if we’re alone.” He looks to Waver and flashes that white-toothed grin. “I could always carry you, princeling, if your legs give out. You can’t weigh much more than a full pack of supplies in any case.”

“ _Idiot_ ,” Waver snaps, and reaches out to smack hard against Iskandar’s arm. He makes no effort to soften the blow but Iskandar doesn’t appear in the least discomfited by the impact; he just laughs with something like his usual volume as they go on pacing down the road. “I’m not going to be _carried_ , I can walk myself.”

“That’s good to hear,” Iskandar says. “As we have a great deal of it ahead of us.” He grins at Waver again. “We’ll start by making it to those trees for some cover for the night.” He strides forward, lengthening his stride as if his words have reminded him of his goal; Waver gusts an unsubtle sigh and rocks himself forward to drag his feet into a jog and catch back up before falling back to the hurried pace he has to set to stay alongside the other.

Even with Waver’s legs aching and his shoulders sore, the darkness of the night doesn’t seem quite as heavy with the steady thud of Iskandar’s footsteps at his side.


	11. Fidelity

Waver is shivering by the time he returns from the riverbank. He kept himself as clear of the cold water as he could -- the seasons are still coming down from the warmth of late summer and into the first chill of fall, but that doesn’t stop the water from feeling like snowmelt -- but the cut across his palm was filthy by the time they stopped, smeared over with his own spilled blood, and stinging with the sweat of what feels like hours of walking, and far grimier than Waver wishes it was. He’s interested enough in avoiding infection and unskilled enough with any kind of healing magic that he doesn’t protest when Iskandar tells him to wash in the river just out of sight past the pool of light thrown off by the tiny fire the other allowed them to make. It’s pitch black under the branches of the trees overhead, an effect only made worse by the flickering illumination of the fire, however tiny, but Waver fumbles his way with care enough that he keeps from toppling in on his way to the river and during the process of scrubbing at the slice at the base of his thumb with increasing vigor as the cold numbs the ache of the injury into a dull throb of protest that takes over his whole hand where he’s holding it submerged.By the time Waver draws his hand free and shakes to shed the extra droplets of chill water his movement is clumsy, as if he’s swinging someone else’s hand that has ended up accidentally attached to the end of his wrist, and when he gets to his feet to return to the faint glow of the firelight it’s with his motions slow with the weight of exhaustion so deep it’s hard to keep moving forward at all.

Iskandar has been busy while Waver was lingering at the bank. He’s spread out both the bedrolls he carried from the palace, unrolling them on either side of the tiny fire still crackling over the few sticks he offered it for fuel. He has a knife, too, a smaller one than the enormous weapon still slung at his hip, and he’s presently occupied in cutting up a larger array of branches into lengths suitable for the pocket-sized fire they have between them. He has a small heap of them next to him already; as Waver approaches Iskandar cuts the last branch into a pair of smaller lengths and drops them to join the first several before looking up to the other. “All done?”

Waver extends his hand towards Iskandar. “It’s clean, at least.” He grimaces as he drops to sit at the edge of the bedroll opposite the fire from where Iskandar is squatting; the movement aches in his protesting knees, which collapse to drop him to the ground somewhat less ceremoniously than he could wish. “I’m also on the verge of frostbite, but it’s better than the alternative.”

Iskandar angles his head to the side in surrender to this statement as he reaches out to catch Waver’s outstretched hand in his. His fingers are much warmer than Waver’s, whether from the fire or just his own natural body heat; Waver flinches at the prickle of pain that burns through him at the contact but doesn’t pull his palm away from the careful but unflinching press of Iskandar’s thumb.

“It’s a clean cut,” the other observes. “And not as deep as it could be. You’re lucky, princeling.”

Waver snorts. “I was stupid,” he says. “Picking up a bare blade with my hand? I would have deserved losing my fingers for something like that.”

“You were in shock,” Iskandar says calmly. “It’s impossible to say how first combat will take someone. Best is to count yourself lucky you weren’t on a battlefield and move forward.” He gets to his feet, still bracing Waver’s hand in his hold as he steps over the flicker of their fire so he can crouch down again next to the other’s bedroll. “We should bandage this.”

“It’ll be fine,” Waver tells him. “It’s not even bleeding anymore.”

“Only because it’s cold.” Iskandar lets Waver’s hand go, leaving it to hover in the air between them as he reaches for the edge of the other’s rumpled tunic. Waver frowns, unsure what Iskandar intends with his clothes, but the other doesn’t offer a more direct explanation. He just keeps pulling at the fabric, frowning at it until he finds whatever it is he’s looking for and tightens his hold. It’s only when he brings the knife forward to cut a strip free of the relatively clean lining of the other’s clothes that Waver realizes his intention. Iskandar lets his tunic go and lifts the strip of loose cloth free while he tucks the knife to vanish somewhat at his belt before ducking in to fold the fabric in on itself to catch the loose threads at the inside of the strip rather than trailing at the outside.

“It’ll start bleeding again as soon as you can feel your fingers.” Waver offers his hand without waiting to be told and Iskandar winds the fabric around his palm, drawing the length of it tight enough that Waver hisses in the back of his throat although he doesn’t pull his hand back. Iskandar keeps wrapping the bandage around his palm, cinching it close before tying off the trailing ends at the back of Waver’s wrist. “Give it a day or two and it should be well enough to stand on its own.”

Waver looks up from the loop of fabric wrapping his palm. Iskandar is still looking at what he’s doing, the full force of his attention turned on the bandage he’s pulling around Waver’s hand. His hair is brilliant as flame in the firelight, his movements surprisingly gentle as he loops the fabric around itself to tug tight; for a moment Waver feels the full weight of his life debt crushing down against him, as if he can feel his continuing existence as the burden Iskandar shouldered as easily as he did the pair of bedrolls now waiting for them.

He doesn’t mean to speak. He’s having enough trouble filling his lungs with air; words seem an impossibility beyond the point of reaching for them. But his throat works all the same, shifting to lay claim to his voice, and “Thank you,” is what Waver ends up blurting out at such a careless volume it’s almost a shout. Iskandar’s gaze comes up, his eyes fix on Waver’s face, and Waver has to duck his head immediately to hide behind the shadow of his hair while his face colors and he fights for something more articulate to say.

“You saved my life,” he mumbles. “Twice, at least. I wouldn’t have made it out of the city without you. Kayneth’s men would have had me killed.”

Iskandar’s shoulder shifts on a shrug. “You might have ended in a cell instead.”

Waver coughs a laugh. “They weren’t interested in capturing me,” he says, and lifts his head to meet Iskandar’s eyes. “You know that as well as I do. I would have died in that garden without you.”

Iskandar doesn’t look away from Waver’s face. Waver can feel himself flushing hot all across his cheeks with the self-consciousness that comes with the uncomfortable reality of this honesty, but Iskandar doesn’t seem to see his reaction, or at least doesn’t comment on it. “I am your bodyguard, after all.”

Waver grimaces and looks aside again. “Bodyguard to a bastard prince,” he says. “I don’t think anyone expected you to take that seriously. It’s not as if Kayneth would have protested you standing aside for his man. Your role has been a joke from the start.”

“No,” Iskandar says. His hand bracing Waver’s tightens hard enough to sting against the slow-warming skin, and Waver’s gaze jumps back up in spite of himself to meet the other’s stare. “I swore an oath to protect your life with my own, so long as we both are breathing.” He presses his other hand atop Waver’s upturned palm to clasp the other’s hurt hand between both of his; Waver can feel the warmth of the contact run all the way up his arm and into his shoulder to spill down against the length of his spine. “A true king must be honorable in his promises, first and foremost.”

Waver chokes out a laugh that drags towards a gasping sob in his throat. “You _are_ a true king,” he says. He shakes his head and hiccups over a breath. “Better than I would have been, even if I had stayed.” It’s a relief just to say it, to cede the authority that he’s been struggling to hold to himself, to give way in the fight that he hasn’t even really been sure he wished to win; Waver’s lungs ease with the admission, his breath rushes out of him in a sigh. He’s still for a moment, his mind clear of anything but the relief of surrender in a slow-lost war; and then he shifts, moving on impulse to draw himself up onto his knees. He lifts his free hand to clasp against Iskandar’s still holding to his bandaged palm, to make an offering of his upturned hold as he ducks his head in over the other’s hands.

“I swear fealty,” he says, head tipped down so he’s speaking the words to the warmth of Iskandar’s hands around his, so the weight of the other’s gaze is fixed at the top of his head and the forward tilt of his shoulders. “I, Waver Velvet, hereby pledge my obedience and allegiance to you, King Iskandar, wherever and in whatever you see fit.” The words seem frail, strange and shaky in Waver’s throat instead of falling with the stone-heavy weight they ought to carry, but Waver’s heart is pounding all the same, rattling with self-consciousness enough to prove the permanence of what he’s doing. “Henceforth I will be your loyal subject until the end of my days.” Waver hesitates for a moment, unsure of how to conclude; and then he ducks his head down over Iskandar’s hands to touch his lips against the span of the broad knuckles before him.

There’s a pause, a moment long enough for Waver to hear the echo of his own voice at the inside of his head, to feel the force of his statement settle in to the marrow of his bones. Then Iskandar lets his hand under Waver’s hold go, drawing away rather than sliding his fingers from the other’s grip, and when his touch lands against dark hair Waver shuts his eyes to the gentle weight settling against the top of his head.

“I accept your fealty, Waver Velvet.” Iskandar’s voice is a rumble even with how low he’s speaking; Waver can hear the resonance of it hum through the whole of his body with that force of certainty he felt so lacking in his own words. “I will defend and support you as my loyal vassal.” His hand presses closer to the top of Waver’s head; Waver can feel the weight settle in against his spine as if it’s tying him to the ground, like a tether to hold him steady against the buffets of reality as dark and cold as that river rushing past and away into the night.

Iskandar lifts his hand, and Waver lifts his head, and draws in to cross his arms over his chest. His face is glowing as bright as Iskandar’s hair, he’s sure, and he can’t make any attempt to ease the color from his cheeks, but there’s none of the laugh or teasing comment he’s braced for. There’s just a touch, gentle even as it ruffles through his hair, and Iskandar’s voice rumbling soft as a lullaby.

“Get some rest,” he says. “We’ll be getting back on the road early to put some more distance between us and the palace.” Waver ducks his head and sets himself to tugging his boots free so he can fit into the warmth of his bedroll; it’s only once he’s settling himself against the ground that he looks back to Iskandar still leaning over the fire and thinks of the other.

“What about you?”

Iskandar looks sideways at him and beams a smile. “I’ll keep the fire going a little longer so you can warm up,” he says. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of myself well enough.” Waver thinks about protesting further, although he supposes he lacks the authority to insist on much of anything anymore; but Iskandar reaches out to pat gentle comfort against his shoulder, and exhaustion is too powerful an opponent for Waver to long stand against with his body wrapped in the bedroll and his face warmed by the glow of the flame. His lashes weight his eyes to shut, his thoughts wander free of his control, and he drifts away into dreams before he realizes that he’s asleep.


	12. Warmth

Waver falls asleep almost as soon as they stop the next day.

He doesn’t mean to. They camped well short of sundown, forced to an earlier rest by the blisters on Waver’s feet and the ache in his legs than Iskandar, at least, would prefer; but between hunger and exhaustion Waver can’t muster composure to even pretend at the ability to continue, and the total lack of pursuit they have enjoyed all day means Iskandar doesn’t need to make good on his threat to carry him. They stop early instead, surrendering to a need for some kind of food and for Waver to rest his feet, and Iskandar takes the bow Waver has been carrying and vanishes into the forest to hunt while Waver limps to the edge of the river and sets himself against a long, smooth boulder so he can strip his boots off and submerge his feet in the chill of the water. The cool feels good, even if it aches and stings in the open blisters he’s accumulated over the course of the day, and with the numbing effect on his most egregious source of pain his exhaustion sweeps in to lay claim to his attention instead. He leans sideways to rest against the boulder alongside him, shutting his eyes to the glare of the sunlight off the surface of the water, and sleep rushes in and over him before he realizes it’s approaching.

It’s a hand at his shoulder that wakes him. The pressure is gentle, steadying as much as forceful, but in the uncomfortable dreams Waver is wandering imagination makes the grip Kayneth’s, tightens the hold to the force of a guardsman swinging a blade towards his neck. He jerks upright, pulling sideways to flail in an attempt to loosen himself from the hold; an attempt he’s lucky to fail at, since it’s only the hand bracing his arm that saves him from tumbling right off his boulder and straight into the cold of the river before him.

“Hold there, princeling,” a voice rumbles, and Waver blinks hard and returns to some awareness of his surroundings, or at least of the actual owner of the hand holding his arm in such a certain grip. Iskandar is crouching next to him, grinning at his sudden waking but unflinching in his hold keeping Waver steady on the riverbank instead of in the current itself. “You’re safe, it’s me.”

“Iskandar,” Waver says, still struggling to replace himself in the shape of reality around him. The light is far different than it was; the sun has sunk half below the horizon, now, and the surface of the river is glowing orange with the spreading light of sunset sweeping across the sky. His feet are fully numb, when he finally pulls them from the water; a benefit to his blisters, he thinks, but hardly an advantage to his need to walk back to the site Iskandar declared as their campground. “I thought you were…”

“Indeed,” Iskandar says. “Luckily your dreams were wrong, this time.” He lets Waver’s arm go as the other collects his balance and reaches to draw his boots in towards himself so he can fit them on, although he remains to watch as Waver fumbles with the laces.

“You were gone for a while,” Waver observes as he knots one boot on over the prickling hurt of sensation returning to long-chilled skin. “Did you manage to find anything to eat?”

Iskandar tips his head towards the camp behind them. “You’ll be able to smell it in the air soon,” he informs Waver. “A pair of rabbits, still autumn-plump. It was the preparation that took more time than the catching, they almost walked into the arrows themselves.” Waver ties off the laces of his second boot and Iskandar gets to his feet at once to offer a hand to urge the other up. “They’ll be roasting over the fire now.”

“I can hardly wait.” Waver lets Iskandar help him up -- the force of the other’s hold is such that he’s more dragged to his feet outright and then placed atop them -- before the other turns to lead the way back to camp. Waver follows, shoulders hunched in and arms folded over his chest to hold in what heat he might still have left to him. “Something hot would be incredible.”

Iskandar booms another laugh, loud enough that Waver imagines he can hear it rustle in the leaves of the trees overhead. “It’ll be hotter than you can eat at first,” he assures Waver. “A pitcher of good wine would warm us even better, but we’ll have to settle for full bellies for now. If we make good time we should reach a town within the next day or two and we’ll be able to have a real celebration!” He goes on speaking as he leads the way through the trees, speaking with no concern for the volume of his voice or any apparent alarm at the ever-diminishing possibility of pursuit, but Waver can’t pay attention to the sound of the other’s words, even if the rumble of Iskandar’s voice washes over him with the regular splash and curl of a wave against a lakeshore. There’s a pressure at his chest, tight and gripping as if a fist around his heart, and he can’t loosen the tension in his shoulders as he hunches in over his tight-crossed arms. The feeling in his feet is coming back but he thinks he’d rather it stayed distant; all it’s serving is to remind him that his feet feel like ice cold enough to drain the whole of the heat in his body in a futile attempt to warm the stiff ache of his blistered toes.

Iskandar throws himself down onto one of the two bedrolls he’s laid out without pausing to look back at Waver. There’s a fire crackling between them, a larger one than the breathless uncertainty of the one Iskandar allowed the night before, but even when Waver sits on the unoccupied bedroll he can’t get close enough for the heat to overcome the chill of the wind he feels cutting through his jacket as if it’s hardly there at all.

“These will be ready within the hour,” Iskandar says as he reaches out to twist one of the pair of sticks holding a skinned rabbit out over the flickering heat of the fire. “We will sleep better tonight, far from your brother’s palace and with a proper meal to ease our rest!”

“It’s not his palace yet,” Waver protests, or tries to. His words come out shaken out of intelligibility by the shiver running up his spine, and he nearly bites his tongue over the last word before he closes his mouth and grimaces instead. His feet are aching worse now than they have all the rest of the day, as the hurt of the unfamiliar exertion and the chill of the river both dig deep into him, and the cold is spreading up into the whole of his body, as if the natural heat of his blood is spent and fading with every flutter of the wind through his hair.

Iskandar looks up at Waver over the fire. Waver meets his gaze for a moment, feeling briefly and foolishly jealous of the warmth glowing ruddy color into the other’s cheeks and granting such easy comfort to his shoulders, before he ducks his head forward in a patently futile attempt to hunch himself into greater warmth when his body presently seems to have none at all to offer. He reaches to extend one hand towards the flames before him, gritting his teeth in a mostly useless attempt to hold back the shivers wracking him, and a much larger hand comes out to close around his spread fingers.

“You’re freezing,” Iskandar observes. His hand feels like fire against Waver’s own chilled fingers; it’s that as much as anything else that keeps Waver from wrenching his hand back and away. “The river sapped all the heat away from you.”

“I didn’t mean to stay there so long,” Waver says. “I fell asleep.”

“You’re still chilled now,” Iskandar tells him, as if Waver couldn’t notice himself. “We will do better to warm you before the cool of night.” He lets Waver’s hand go but only to lean forward and lay a heavy hand at the other’s shoulder. “Lie down.”

“What?” Waver rocks back to draw away from the other’s touch as he looks up to frown at Iskandar. “I’m fine, I can wait.”

“Lie down,” Iskandar urges. “I will wake you when the meal is prepared. You will be warmer in your blankets.”

“I’m not going to fall asleep,” Waver protests, but it’s hard to muster any other argument; even the lure of the fire isn’t enough to strip the soft of the blankets behind him of their promise of comfort. He frowns and ducks his head to work the laces of his boots free once more so he can strip them off the pained ache of his feet. “I’ll just lie down to warm up.”

“That’s most important,” Iskandar agrees. “Though if you sleep I will wake you for food. You shouldn’t miss any more meals than you have.”

Waver makes a face as he pulls back the edge of his bedroll so he can slide in and under the layer of covering. His feet are still cold enough that they feel like they’ll never be warm, blanket or no, but if nothing else the extra layer sheds the cut of the wind, and that’s persuasion enough to urge him the rest of the way under the covering. “I’m _fine_ ,” he says, even if his stomach is grumbling to remind him that skipping out on another day’s food is the last thing he wants to do. “I’m a perfectly normal size for my country. Is everyone just a monster where you’re from?”

Iskandar laughs. “Perhaps we just take better care of ourselves,” he suggests. “Rest and warm yourself, princeling. Tomorrow morning I’ll show you how to make use of that bow yourself.”

“Oh good,” Waver mumbles against the edge of his bedroll, now drawn up so high around his neck that it threatens the motion of his mouth. “More things to do. Isn’t running for my life enough to worry about?” Iskandar laughs as if he’s made a joke; Waver doesn’t quite smile, but he thinks it’s only because of the shivers still coursing through his shoulders. He shuts his eyes -- just for a moment, to focus on fighting back the quivers running through him -- and turns his head down against the edge of his bedroll to take a moment of peace for himself while he waits for the weight of the blankets around him to undo some of the cold that has so gripped his body.

The blanket helps stop the bite of the wind, it’s true, but still Waver thinks he must be lying there shivering for nearly ten minutes before an extra weight layers atop him, heavy and warm enough that he can feel the comfort of it seep into his bones. He shudders an exhale of relief, feeling the tension in his body easing almost as quickly as he breathes, and when he tucks his head down against the edge of the new comfort exhaustion sweeps in to take over the grip cold has on him. Waver reaches out to close his fingers on the edge of the warmth and finds the undone fastening of a cloak under his hold as proof of the source of this comfort. He thinks about protesting this use of Iskandar’s travelling cloak, of insisting that the other keep it for himself, but it’s hard to muster the energy to complain, and he slides into a doze while he’s still seeking out the words to offer it back.


	13. Slip

A hand weights at the top of Waver’s head and pulls to urge his gaze back up. “Keep watching in front of you,” Iskandar commands. “You won’t sight straight if you’re looking down.”

“I can’t see what I’m doing,” Waver protests. “How am I supposed to see where my hand is if I’m not looking at it?”

“Lift it up,” Iskandar tells him. The hand at Waver’s head lets go to catch at his elbow instead; when Iskandar pulls Waver’s arm lifts obediently to raise from its angle and bring up the weight of the strung bow in his hand. “If you raise your arm high enough you’ll be able to sight down the length of the arrow.”

Waver grimaces. “I can’t hold it up like this,” he says. As Iskandar’s hold falls away his arm trembles with the effort of bracing the weight of the bow up against the force of gravity. “It’s too heavy.”

“You’re just weak,” Iskandar tells him with such casual speed that the words hardly carry the insult they might. “Part of training is gaining the strength to manage your weapon.” He reaches to catch at the length of the bowstring taut against the inside of Waver’s arm. “Reach over with your other hand and draw the arrow back.”

Waver heaves a sigh and sets his teeth against the strain shaking through his arm. The bow didn’t feel particularly heavy when he first picked it up, but the curve of it is strange and distant at the length of his arm, and the smooth curve of the wood itself slips against the sweat-slick of his palm until his fingers ache with the effort of steadying the weight. He reaches for the taut string with his bandaged hand gripping the end of an arrow so he can catch the arrow against it and pull back against the resistance.

“Good,” Iskandar says as Waver hisses with the effort to pull the string back. “Use your first two fingers and hold the others back and out of the way.”

“I won’t be able to get it back with just two,” Waver protests, but he lets his hold slide free all the same. The line of the string drags at his fingers; he feels sure the pressure will etch a permanent mark across the inside of his knuckles. “Like that?”

“Exactly.” Iskandar steps in behind him; his foot bumps against the outside edge of Waver’s boot and kicks to urge the other sideways. “Straighten out your stance. One foot forward so you’re making a line of your shoulders.” His hands settle on either of Waver’s shoulders and pull to urge the other back; Waver stumbles with the force but manages to hold onto the arrow, at least, even as his feet scuff through the dirt and leaves underfoot. Iskandar lets his shoulders go and reaches for his hips instead; the force of his pull is strong enough that Waver nearly falls outright before he catches himself against the support of the other’s chest.

“There,” Iskandar says, and steps in against the outline he’s made of Waver’s back. One hand comes around Waver’s shoulders to catch and steady at the flex of his arm drawing back the arrow; the other braces underneath his other forearm to lift and urge the bow back to its proper place. “That’s the way you should be holding it.”

Waver shakes his head. “I don’t think I can,” he says. “It’s too much, I can barely keep the string back. There’s no way I’d be able to manage to aim with this as well.”

“It will get easier,” Iskandar assures him. “I’ll show you exercises you can do to build up your arms and shoulders. And practice will give you the wrist strength to manage the bow.” He tightens his hold against Waver’s upper arm, where the other is straining to pin back the length of the taut bowstring. “As for this, you’ll want to--” and the strength of Waver’s fingers gives way with no warning at all, the trembling tight of his hold collapsing to drop the string outright. Waver grimaces and turns aside from the sudden release of tension, some vague instinct in him telling him to shield his face from whatever repercussions there may be, but of course the string comes nowhere near the features of his face. It pulls straight instead, sending the arrow skidding into the leaves underfoot as it slices through the air with all the speed brought by what tension Waver managed to pull into it, and whips sharply against the inside of his outstretched forearm so he gasps with the hurt and drops the bow outright.

“ _Ow_ ” he yelps, snatching his arm back in so he can clutch the aching welt in against his chest. “That _hurt_.”

“Let me see.” Iskandar lays his hold in against Waver’s wrist and tugs to urge the other’s arm out and away from him; Waver submits to the force with as much grace as he can find for something that is, in the end, less a matter of will than required surrender. The inside of his arm is marked with a fast-rising line of red, darkening even as he looks at it; he can feel the bruise aching up to the angle of his elbow and down to the slack weight of his wrist in Iskandar’s hold. Iskandar appears utterly unconcerned; he just reaches out to press his fingers against the damaged skin, pushing hard enough that Waver hisses and would flinch back if Iskandar’s grip didn’t hold him steady where he is.

“There’s no real damage,” Iskandar tells him at last before letting Waver’s wrist go so the other can return his swelling arm to its cradle against his chest. “You’re nothing more than bow-bitten.”

“That’s enough,” Waver tells him. “Isn’t there anything I can do to avoid it?”

“You’ll learn faster for a few welts,” Iskandar tells him. “Trained archers wear armguards across their bow hand. We can get you one of those once we reach my kingdom.”

“Once we reach your kingdom,” Waver repeats. “Of course. And until then?”

“You’ll do as all trainees do.” Iskandar flashes that brilliant grin, the one that cuts across the whole of his face with the flash of his teeth. “Bear the marks of your efforts with pride.”

Waver groans. “I don’t know what else I expected from you.”

Iskandar laughs and reaches to pick up the bow before clapping a hand to Waver’s shoulder. “Go soak it in the river for a few minutes. The ache will ease in the cold.” Waver thinks about protesting, for the form of it if not with any expectation of success; and then he heaves a sigh, and turns to take Iskandar’s suggestion.

It’s some minutes later that the other comes to collect him, with their bedrolls returned to his back and his cloak slung over the whole, and Waver’s arm _does_ feel better as he reaches to accept the bow Iskandar has unstrung for him to bear. There’s still a welt across his forearm, one that Waver thinks will take days to entirely fade; but the sun is bright, and Iskandar’s grin is brighter, and Waver finds he doesn’t have to struggle as much as he expected to find a reluctant smile of his own in response.


	14. Rumor

“How do you still have the energy for this?” Waver asks from his perch at the top corner of the stable loft. He has a clear view of the rest of the space from here -- a warm place, greatly to its credit, he thinks, even with the musty sweetness that comes from the animals that make it their home -- including the broad shoulders of his supposed bodyguard, where Iskandar is making mundane use of his strength in pouring feed from a huge bag into the trough that runs across the front line of the stalls. Waver thinks the full bag likely weighed as much as he does, for all his lanky height; even now it’s over half-full, and but for the flex of muscle across Iskandar’s bare back there’s no sign of real effort from the man himself. Waver isn’t even sure he’s breathing hard. “We walked half the day and you’ve been at this for nearly three hours, now.”

Iskandar’s laugh is lower, in here, as if in consideration for the sleepy soft of the horses drowsing in the few occupied stalls he’s attending with the food; it feels as warm against the back of Waver’s thoughts as the humid weight of the air that has long since chased away the chill of the road that he had thought was becoming a permanent fixture in his life. “It’s hardly two, princeling. You have a knack for exaggeration.”

Waver grumbles in the back of his throat, but the sound turns into a huge yawn in spite of himself. “It’s just that I’m tired,” he finally manages, after he’s reclaimed control of some part of his expression and the use of his throat again. “I’d rather we were done out here so we could go back inside and get some rest. I can’t wait to sleep in a bed again.”

“There was no need for you to linger,” Iskandar tells him as he straightens from the last stall and swings the bag of feed back around to thud against the floor of the stable before drawing the twine holding the top shut tight again and looping it into a knot with the easy grace of familiarity. “You could be fed and asleep in that promised bed even now.”

“Very funny,” Waver says. “That innkeeper was never going to let us in until he got the work he wanted from you by payment. I’m not sure he still won’t leave us out here for the night.”

“That wouldn’t be a bad trade either,” Iskandar says as he carries the bag of feed back to its resting place in the corner and lays claim to the shirt he stripped off and dropped over the rest of their possessions in the corner of the stable. He doesn’t bother putting it back on -- a wise choice, Waver thinks, given the sweat of exertion presently gleaming across his chest and arms -- just slings it up over his shoulder as he turns to stride across the distance of the stable to where Waver has climbed to the edge of the loft. “It’s warm enough in here we’d hardly need blankets at all.”

“And we’d wake with straw in our clothes,” Waver tells him. “I’ll take the bed, if it’s all the same to you.”

Iskandar extends both hands up towards Waver at the edge of his perch. “I thought you were a farmboy,” he says as Waver sits up and slides to the edge of the loft so he can brace himself against Iskandar’s forearms. He doesn’t need to -- Iskandar lifts him down with as much careless grace as he hefted that sack of grain across the span of the stable around them -- but for the first moment of weightlessness Waver’s fingers still tighten against the other’s arms as his feet drop through the open air between the edge of the loft and the ground below. His heart is racing with more speed than it ought to be master of by the time Iskandar has set him back onto his own feet; Waver reclaims his hands for himself and pulls back from the span of Iskandar’s chest as soon as he has the footing to do so.

“I was,” he says, and steps forward to collect the other’s cloak and the bow that is his own from the heap of their belongings that Iskandar set at the corner of the stable. “Just because I know what it’s like to be picking straw out of everything I own doesn’t mean I relish the thought of reliving the experience.”

Iskandar’s laugh is closer than Waver realized it was; one large arm reaches past him to lift the straps holding the other’s enormous sword half-hidden in the weight of their bedrolls. “Well then,” Iskandar says, and swings his own burden up over his shoulder as Waver is still struggling to get the quiver of arrows secure over his. “Let’s see how honorable our good innkeeper feels like being tonight.”

The innkeeper in question seems startled to see them back so early, from what Waver can see of the man’s face as Iskandar pushes open the door to the inn and booms “It’s done!” to what few patrons there are as much as to the owner himself. Then again, maybe it’s not their speed that has him so wide-eyed; even in a room populated with men built along the solid lines of farmers and miners, Iskandar looms like a giant, paradoxically gaining in size with the less clothing he has to disguise the simple bulk of his existence. Waver rolls his eyes from behind his companion’s back, but no one is paying attention to him; the few men not sunk in their cups are occupied in casting sideways glances at Iskandar, and the innkeeper is bustling out from behind his counter with some mumbled excuse about checking up on the work they’ve completed.

“It is all done most thoroughly!” Iskandar tells the man as he pushes past them to make for the stables. “It would be beneath the honor of my name to fail my word in this!” But the innkeeper is already gone, and Iskandar doesn’t seem more than amused by the man’s haste; he makes his way through the common room to the edge of the counter instead to ask for a mug of ale from the girl gaping at him from the other side of the surface. She doesn’t offer any protest, just a single wide-eyed nod, and Iskandar settles himself at one of the stools at the edge of the bar while Waver is left to perch at one alongside him and wait for the innkeeper’s return.

The man isn’t gone long -- hardly a few minutes -- but Waver jumps when he comes back in, twisting to look back and see what the verdict is to be. At his side Iskandar doesn’t even look up from the swallow of beer he’s downing.

“Incredible,” the innkeeper breathes, in such a tone of astonishment that Waver’s usual panicked tension eases at once. The man’s face had seemed narrow and pinched on miserliness when they came in, but there’s no sign of that now; he’s beaming, smiling up at Iskandar with as much open generosity as if he’s a long-lost son come home. “You did all I asked and more.”

Iskandar sets his cup down on the counter; it rings with the resonance of something all but empty, in spite of the few minutes he’s had to make use of it. “Of course,” he booms. “As we agreed.”

“You make a fine stablehand,” the innkeeper says. “I don’t know where I’ll find someone like you again. How long did you say you’d be staying?”

“Just for the night,” Iskandar tells him, and reaches out to press a hand to Waver’s shoulder. “My companion and I must be on our way with the morning, I’m afraid. We have far to travel.”

The innkeeper heaves a sigh of what sounds like sincere resignation. “That is a shame,” he says. “Your work is more than worth a room for the night.”

“You _do_ have a room?” Waver asks. He’s speaking more sharply than he ought, he can tell even before Iskandar’s fingers tighten at his shoulder, but he can’t quite trust in the generosity of a man towards strangers who will be gone with the morning light. “A private one?”

The innkeeper nods. “Of course, of course,” he says. “This is hardly the time of year for visitors and we don’t draw many even for the biggest festivals. I have nearly a full floor that will be going empty otherwise, you may as well make use of it.”

“Might we take some meals as well?” Iskandar asks. “Stable cleaning is hungry work, and my companion has yet to reach his full growth.”

“Certainly,” the innkeeper says. “There’s a pot of stew on the fire in the kitchen, we should have some ready in an hour or so. Would you like to wait for that, or…”

“Show us to our room,” Waver tells him. “We’ll take the opportunity to rest before our meal.”

The innkeeper’s gaze slides to Waver for what must be nearly the first time since their arrival. There’s a strange crease at his forehead as he considers the other, as if he’s trying to place his features; for a moment Waver has a brief, illogical moment of terror that he will be recognized as the runaway prince he is. But there’s nothing remarkable about his face, and even the value of his clothes is dimmed by the days of travelling and sleeping in them they’ve suffered, and after a moment the innkeeper’s attention drops instead to the weight of Iskandar’s hand at Waver’s shoulder, as if it’s of as much interest as his face. His gaze comes sideways, up over the wall Iskandar’s presence always makes, and it’s only then that the tension in his expression eases in the clear dawning of some kind of epiphany, though Waver can’t imagine what.

“Rest,” the innkeeper echoes back, in a tone of understanding that he obviously thinks he now shares with the others in spite of Waver’s absolute confusion on the subject. “Of course.” He ducks his head to consider the keys on his belt as he rattles through them. “And privacy.” He lifts a key and offers a smile to go with it. “I have just the thing. Come with me.”

The second floor of the inn is far quieter than the main space, even with the few patrons that were clustered around those tables laid out for general use; Waver can hear the sound of the boards creaking under the weight of Iskandar’s footsteps as they make their way down the hallway, but if any of the other rooms are occupied their residents are either downstairs or utterly silent as the trio makes their way down the hall.

“We have several rooms available, as I said,” the innkeeper is continuing, speaking clearly so Waver can hear him even bringing up the rear of their group. “The largest one is near the stairway, but you get a great deal more traffic down that way. This one is only slightly smaller and you won’t have anyone within any of the adjourning rooms for the evening.” He sets the key in the lock and turns the bolt over before pushing the door open and gesturing them into the space. Iskandar has to duck through the doorway; Waver follows in his wake, wandering farther into the open space of the room before them while Iskandar stays by the doorway alongside the innkeeper.

“It’ll be very quiet in here,” the innkeeper is saying as Waver turns back from considering the window set into the wall overlooking the square weight of the stables below. “You’ll be as comfortable as in your own bedroom, I have no doubt.” He holds the key up before setting it down at the edge of the stand with the washbasin. “I’ll leave this to your keeping as well, though I’ll be sure that none of mine interrupt without knocking.” He beams up at Iskandar. “You can enjoy your young man to your heart’s content, milord. A bed and a bath after is always better for that kind of thing than a bedroll, isn’t it?”

Waver can feel the flush start from under the collar of his shirt and spread up over the whole of his face like a curtain, as if his embarrassment is rising in a tide to suffuse the entirety of his face with scarlet. For a moment he can’t speak at all, can’t find any kind of voice for himself to offer a response or a denial or any kind of reaction beyond his absolute self-consciousness; but the innkeeper is looking up at Iskandar, and Iskandar is booming another one of those immersive laughs as if this misunderstanding is no more than a point of amusement.

“I can agree with you there,” he says, and reaches out to clap a hand at the man’s shoulder without looking back to Waver standing at the far corner of the room. “We’ll take you up on that privacy and come down for the evening meal with sundown.”

“Of course,” the man agrees. “I expect you’ll be working up quite an appetite.” He couples this with a wink before turning to retreat from the doorway. “There’s a bathroom around the corner at the end of the hall as well. Shall I send up a man with some hot water for the tubs?”

“Yes indeed,” Iskandar tells him. “We thank you.” The man waves this off before offering Waver himself a nod; he’s turning as quickly as he gives it, though, putting words to his retreat before Waver can so much as close his mouth as part of his effort to retrieve speech to his shocked-silent thoughts. The door closes behind him, the latch clicking into place with a strange, heavy finality, and then Iskandar is turning back to face Waver, his grin spreading wider as he sees the flush burning like fire all across the other’s cheeks.

“You’re red as a cherry,” he informs Waver as he slings the pack over his shoulder down into the corner of the room. “I would relish seeing your face if he had offered to provide us with women instead.”

Waver closes his mouth so hard he can hear the snap of his teeth coming together. “He took me for your...your…”

“Plaything, likely,” Iskandar says. He looks utterly unfazed by this statement, even as Waver’s face darkens with another wave of heat; he catches at his shirt and slides it off his shoulder to toss atop the rest of their belongings before looking back to give Waver a considering once-over. “Or my paramour, perhaps. You do have your full height, even if you are skinny with it. I’d think it’d be difficult to have the keeping of you without your will to the same.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel _better_?” Waver strides forward from the wall to cross the distance to where Iskandar is straightening by the door; this is a mistake, he realizes as he draws near enough to glare up into the other’s face, but it’s too late to back down now, even with the whole wall of Iskandar’s existence to throw himself upon. “He thought I--that you--” He lifts his hand to push aside the words that won’t come. “Everyone down there thinks I’m your _whore_!”

Iskandar’s brows knit together. “More likely they take us for lovers,” he says. “And you for a man grown enough to lay claim to whom his desires tend him. Is there such insult in that?”

Waver hisses past his teeth and lifts a hand to slam his fist against the unassailable layer of muscle that forms Iskandar’s shoulder in front of him. He’s not surprised when the other doesn’t so much as flinch at the impact.

“They think we’re,” Waver starts, his voice breaking sharply enough that he has to duck his head to hide the wet starting at his eyes. “That alone up here, that we’re…” His voice gives way outright, his head comes forward to let his hair swing over his face, and he struggles over a breath that rasps almost to a sob in his throat. His chest is aching, his face is hot; he can’t lower his hand, can’t collect himself, he doesn’t know now if he’s crying from shame at the innkeeper’s assumption or at the spill of tears across his cheeks under Iskandar’s ever-steady gaze.

A hand lifts, fingers touch against the fall of Waver’s hair. “Princeling,” Iskandar murmurs, his voice a rumble in his chest, a vibration under Waver’s stalled-out blow. “Is it the partner you object to, or the act itself?” Waver’s head cants farther forward; he doesn’t try to lift his head to meet Iskandar’s steady gaze. The fingers in his hair slide down by an inch, drifting towards the suggestion of a caress without enough force to entirely grant them that weight.

“There is nothing shameful in physical coupling.” Iskandar’s voice seems to fill the room, a gigantic hum that presses down on Waver with physical weight. “For pleasure, for connection; least of all for love.” His hand drops from Waver’s hair to the other’s shoulder and lingers there, just for a moment. “Is it so dreadful to be mistaken for such?”

Waver can’t answer. His face is still burning, his whole body still radiant with the heat of embarrassment that all Iskandar’s words can’t uproot from him; but his hand is still against Iskandar’s chest, the tight curl of his fingers long since knocked loose against the line of the other’s shoulder. He can smell the heavy scent of Iskandar’s sweat drying on the other’s skin, can feel the warmth that the other carries with him like a fever in the bare skin so close to his; and for a breath his imagination catches and flares bright into the darkness of his shadowed face, offering Iskandar’s big hands against Waver’s back, his broad shoulders shifting as he leans in over the soft of the bed, the solid strength of his thighs urging Waver’s legs apart as his body flexes into a cresting wave of heat over--and Waver gasps an inhale and shoves against Iskandar’s chest to knock himself back and free of the other’s hold. The blow is minimal, nothing like enough to truly overcome Iskandar’s grip, but the other lets him go without any attempt to hold him in place even as Waver stumbles and nearly falls for his abrupt retreat backwards.

“I’m taking first bath,” Waver says, the words tearing sharp in his throat as he moves towards the door. He keeps his head down; he can’t manage to lift his gaze to meet Iskandar’s, to catch so much as a glimpse of what expression the other may be turning on him. “Maybe that’ll stop the gossip downstairs.”

Iskandar shrugs. “They won’t have brought the water up for the tub yet.”

“I don’t care,” Waver says, and turns to pull open the door and all but throw himself into the hallway. “I’ll wait there.”

He’s sure his efforts to stem the flow of gossip downstairs are worse than useless; his red-faced wait for the bath in the corner of the tiled room surely gives an impression of a lover’s quarrel more clearly than anything else. But the man who fills the tub with steaming water without making eye contact is a stranger, just as much as the innkeeper and the patrons downstairs; and tomorrow Waver and Iskandar will be moving on, and it is Iskandar Waver must continue on with.

For the excuse of separating the pound of his heart and the flush on his skin from the focus of those unflinching eyes, he’d bear a lot more than roadside gossip.


	15. Attentive

They don’t speak of it again that night. They hardly speak at all, in actual fact: Waver returns with his hair wet and his hand unbandaged, and Iskandar goes almost at once to make use of the bath himself. Waver doesn’t watch him go, and when his thoughts start to drift a little too close to the haze of steam on skin a few doors away he gets up from the bed to dig out the bow and bowstring from their packs in the corner of the room. He manages to string the bow, after several minutes’ effort and by means of bracing one end hard against the narrow corner of the room; by then his arms are shaky with the effort, but at least his attention is given over to a different topic than the one he’s been avoiding. There’s barely enough space to practice drawing back an arrow, and then only with the room empty with Iskandar’s absence, but Waver makes an attempt before he feels his fingers trembling with the effort and gives over rather than continuing and risking another dark welt atop the one already marking out the inside of his forearm. He fights the string free of the bow with slightly greater ease than he found in stringing it, and it’s while he’s returning the carefully coiled loop to their supplies that the door comes open and Iskandar comes in, dressed and glowing with ruddy health as much as with the beaming smile he turns on Waver.

“Come, princeling!” he says with all his usual cheer, and claps a hand to Waver’s shoulder to urge him towards the door. “Let’s see what there may be to make a meal of tonight.”

Waver doesn’t particularly want to go downstairs. He’s just worn himself free of his own self-conscious strain; the idea of returning to face the assumptions of all those strangers’ eyes downstairs is hardly appealing. But Iskandar’s hand is on his shoulder and urging him into motion without waiting for Waver’s own agreement on the matter, and Waver is hardly going to bring up the cause of his stress when Iskandar seems to have left it behind, so he sets his jaw and stumbles downstairs with his face only flushed pink instead of the burning scarlet it was before.

Waver is braced for misery. All it will take is one raised eyebrow, one muffled laugh, and he intends to break free of Iskandar’s hold and get himself right back up the stairs to hide under the bedsheets for the rest of the evening. But the innkeeper greets them with unabashed friendliness, apparently still delighted with the quantity and quality of work Iskandar did for him, and if the other patrons have come to the same conclusion he did none of them care enough to comment. One of the maids comes out from the kitchen with deep, wide bowls full of stew, and Waver forgets his self-consciousness in the immediate demands of a hunger left too long half-stemmed. He draws the bowl in towards himself and ducks over it with full focus; even so, Iskandar goes through three of the same size before Waver has finished his first. Waver asks for seconds, and gets them too, but his appetite has eased somewhat, and by the time he’s halfway through his second bowl that he can spare some attention for his surroundings.

Their table has become the central focus point while he was occupied in his meal. Waver had thought he was still paying attention to the movement and conversation around him, but he was far more distracted than he believed himself, or maybe the motion was more subtle than what he was watching for. Most of the other patrons are still at their own tables, after all, and the innkeeper still remains at his place behind the raised height of the bar counter; but it’s the focus of their eyes that Waver is seeing now, that Waver can track without effort to the man sitting across the table from him. Iskandar has turned half-away from the table and the empty bowl and half-full mug of ale before him; he’s speaking to a pair of what look to be farmers at the adjourning bench, both of them gazing at him with some measure of the same disbelieving attention that Iskandar invariably draws from Waver himself.

“It was quite a battle,” Iskandar is saying now, one brawny arm slung over the corner of the table as he leans into the support with force enough that Waver would swear the surface is tipping slightly towards the other. “I was with a scouting party, just a few dozen men and none of us equipped for anything more than hunting and a few minor skirmishes. And our mage had fallen ill the evening before and was in no kind of a state to defend even himself, much less the rest of us.”

“What did you do?” one of the farmers asks in the low, breathless tone better suited to a child listening to a fairy tale than the wind-weathered features of a grown man. “Did you win?”

“Idiot,” the man on the other side of the table growls, reaching out to punch against the bicep of the rapt stranger. “He’s here before us, innit he? How’d he manage that if he died on some dusty battlefield?”

Iskandar’s laugh is enormous; Waver can see heads turn to track it, can see mouths curving onto involuntary smiles in answer just to the sound of that amusement. “I am indeed here,” he declares. “We did win that fight, yes. But there were others I lost, too, and it’s some of those that taught me the greatest lessons of my life.”

“How can that be?” the irritable stranger asks, looking somewhat more interested in this. “You mean your men lost? Or did you get captured? Did they have to ransom you back?”

“He’s already telling a story,” the first man protests. “You said you didn’t win, but how did you do it? Against a hundred trained soldiers and you with few scouts and no magic?”

Iskandar laughs again. “There’s no need to rush,” he tells his present audience. “There’s hours still in the night, and there’s nothing goes so well with ale as a good story.”

“You look to be running a bit low there,” a third man calls, from one of the tables far enough off that he can’t possibly see the level of the drink still in Iskandar’s mug. “What do you say to another round on me?”

“I was just about to offer the same,” the second man cuts in. “Perhaps you can take the next round, Farlen.”

The generous man scowls. “I spoke first!”

“And you have a tab as long as those lanky arms of yours.” The second man gets to his feet with force enough to make the motion a decision all in itself. “I’ll collect another round while you finish this tale, and then I want to hear about one of those noble defeats.”

“I claim next choice!” Farlen demands. The rest of the room is shifting too, even if they haven’t yet called out a claim, men turning on their benches to face Iskandar in the corner; some of those too far away for easy hearing are even getting up to move in for a better angle. Iskandar grins and turns away from his empty bowl to face the rest of the room; behind him one of the maids steps in to slip the dish away and retreat to the kitchen. The motion recalls Waver’s attention to his own bowl and the serving of soup still steaming gently up at him; he ducks his head back down, fixing his attention on the rest of his meal as a better place to focus himself than in watching the shift of Iskandar’s hands as he sketches out the layout of a battlefield in the warmth of the common room air, or as he draws his hands back to act out the pull of a bow or the swing of a sword.

The stew is good, as good even at the end of the second bowl as at the start of the first, and it’s hearty and hot enough that Waver ought to be warm through the whole of his body between the bath and the meal and the glow in the air. But he goes colder instead, as the minutes pass marked by the ringing rhythm of Iskandar’s voice over some new triumph and the bursts of gasps or startled laughter won from his enraptured audience, until Waver’s almost shivering by the time he pushes back from his bench to get to his feet. Iskandar glances back at him as Waver moves, some of his smile easing as he looks, but Waver doesn’t wait to urge a break in the pattern of the other’s story. He just turns aside to make his way towards the stairs leading up to the second floor, not even finding the energy to spare for the worried glance the innkeeper turns between himself and Iskandar. He just feels tired, as if all the exhaustion of the last days of flight and hunger have caught up to him at once, until it’s all he can do to pull his boots off before drawing back the weight of the blankets on the bed and hunching himself as far down into their warmth as he can get. Even then he lies shivering in the dark for a long span of minutes before the warmth of the blankets and the exhaustion in his body are enough to pull him down into sleep without the rumble of Iskandar’s breathing next to him to lull him into rest.


	16. Resume

They leave the inn early the next morning. Waver had wondered if they might linger longer, with the walls of a room to buffer them from the illumination of dawn breaking over them, or with the effect of the plentiful ale Iskandar worked his way through on the previous evening; but Waver stirs to the sound of Iskandar splashing his face with water from the washbasin in the corner, evidently no worse for his late night or sleeping on the floor instead of the give of the bed, and by the time Waver has struggled himself to waking and made some effort to smooth his hair down into respectability instead of tangled by the knots of sleep Iskandar has returned the bedroll he claimed for the night to its position at the outside of the bundle he has been carrying and is as ready to depart as Waver himself. He offers Waver a smile as quickly as the other looks to him, coupling it with a hearty “Good morning, princeling!” and a clap against the other’s shoulder that nearly takes Waver off his so-recently attained feet. Usually this would be enough to crease Waver’s forehead on irritation and prompt him to look back and give Iskandar a scowl in the seeming of protest, if nothing else; this morning, with the dregs of his own frustration still bitter in his thoughts, he finds himself so nearly smiling with relief that he has to duck his head to hide his expression behind the weight of his hair.

“Must you be leaving so soon?” the innkeeper asks, when Iskandar leads them down the stairs to return the key to their room and offer their thanks for the warm reception. The man looks sincerely distraught to be considering their departure; something Waver would never have guessed on their arrival, when Iskandar announced their penniless status to a frown and a long stare of consideration. “You did good work for me yesterday and there’s more that’s gone undone than I can manage without bringing on someone else. I’d be happy to give you a room and meals as long as you’d like to stay and help bring things back up to the state they were in. I could even find something for your boy to do, if it’s his entertainment you’re worried about maintaining.”

Waver’s jaw tightens at this dismissal, but it’s hardly the first time he’s heard it, and he doesn’t need the motion of Iskandar’s hand coming up to rest at his shoulder to keep him quiet, however dark the glare he gives the innkeeper may be.

“I’m afraid we can’t linger,” Iskandar says on behalf of them both. “We’re bound for places far distant from this, and while your hospitality has been most welcome we cannot stay fixed while the days pass us by.”

The innkeeper sighs. “It was worth a try,” he admits. “It’s been good to have your help, even for just the one day.” He reaches out to extend his hand towards the pair of them; Iskandar lets Waver’s shoulder go to accept it, closing his grip to solid enough weight around the other man’s fingers that Waver can see a flicker of pain run over the innkeeper’s face. He doesn’t say anything, though, just bears the force of Iskandar’s handshake as manfully as he can, and even with what must be aching fingers he’s smiling when the other lets go.

Iskandar straightens, bracing his hands on his hips as he lifts his head to frown consideration into the inn before breathing deep of the warmth of the air. “Is that the smell of bread? Could we perhaps take a loaf or two with us on our way?”

“Ah,” the innkeeper says, blinking as if startled into this line of thought. “Certainly, yes. I should have offered when you came down.” He turns to make for the kitchen before coming up short and looking back at them. “We have more substantial offerings than bread, if you can delay your departure for the length of a meal.”

Waver is expecting Iskandar to leap at this chance for more food than what they can easily carry, but the other man just shakes his head and waves away the offer. “We must be back on the road,” he says. “Although anything we can eat as we walk would be welcome.” The innkeeper ducks his head in surrender and turns to vanish into the kitchen, leaving Waver and Iskandar briefly alone in a common room still held clear by the hour of the day.

Waver clears his throat. “We’re not in that big of a hurry,” he mumbles, softly so Iskandar can pretend to not hear him if he wants. “Wouldn’t you prefer to have another proper meal? We don’t know when we’ll get our next one.”

“True,” Iskandar rumbles. “Your feet won’t hold out on the road all day. But we can make use of the time to hunt, or maybe fish, if we can find a likely enough river.” He turns his head to look at Waver next to him; Waver only glances up at him for a moment before he ducks away again, but that glimpse is long enough to parse the smile tugging at Iskandar’s broad mouth.

A hand comes down against his back, pressing warm and wide into the space between his shoulderblades. Waver huffs a breath at the impact as Iskandar ducks in towards him. “And I think you’d rather be back to travelling as soon as we can be.” Iskandar’s closer than he needs to be, with how far the low murmur of his voice carries, but Waver can feel the sound hum down the whole length of his spine, and he doesn’t protest any more than he flinches away. “For a prince you’re not as sociable as one might expect.”

“Idiot,” Waver says, even if the word is as weak on his lips as the effort behind the arm he lifts to push Iskandar’s hold on his shoulder up and away. “I’ve only been a prince for a few months. I’ve been a farmboy all my life.”

“Mm, that is true,” Iskandar hums. “Maybe you should have been the one cleaning out the stables last night.” He grins as Waver twists to pull away from his touch and push his arm off with as much strength as he can muster for the struggle, and even as his arm falls Waver has a strong impression it’s out of deliberate surrender to his efforts than from any actual need to give up the hold.

“Here you are.” That’s the innkeeper again, returning from the kitchen where he had vanished; more than a few loaves of bread, he has an entire satchel slung over his shoulder and a pair of steaming rolls in his hands, the crusty outside cut open and layered with what looks like sausage as hot as the bread. Waver’s mouth waters just at the smell of it; it’s a small comfort that Iskandar is no more reserved about reaching to lay claim to their breakfast than he is. The innkeeper swings the satchel off his shoulder to offer it as soon as they’ve accepted the meal before them. “There’s what else we can spare. The bread won’t keep for more than a day or two, but there’s a few cheeses that you should be able to parcel out for at least a week.”

Iskandar draws open the neck of the bag to peer inside; Waver can’t see the contents, but it’s enough to watch the jump of the other’s eyebrows as he gazes at what the innkeeper has given them. Iskandar looks back up, his expression serious. “This is too much.”

The innkeeper shrugs and lifts a hand to rumple through his hair. “We made a double round of bread this morning anyway, and some of those cheeses might as well be eaten rather than languishing in our stockroom. We’ll have another harvest out of the fields before winter really sets in. And you’ll need all the help you can get, if you’re going to be out in the wilds when the storms start to arrive.” Iskandar braces his roll in his teeth so he can free his other hand to reach into the bag; Waver hears the distinct clink of coins against each other, even muffled by the weight of the leather purse holding them, and it’s enough to bring his gaze up along with Iskandar’s to gaze shock at the innkeeper.

The man lifts his hands as if he’s been caught stealing rather than giving money away. “You did good work,” he insists. “In the stables but in the evening too. None of the usuals ever stay so long or buy so much, and they all left happier than when they came in even for the lightness of their purses. That’s worth far more than a handful of silver, even if they weren’t going to be speaking of you for the next days to come.”

This makes Iskandar boom another one of his enormous laughs as he cinches tight the drawstring of the bag. “Very well,” he allows. “If it will further spread the tales of my conquest, let them tell their stories as many times over as they like. Your gift will keep keep us fed in the next town we come to, good innkeeper.”

“The gratitude is mine,” the innkeeper says. “I wish you both well, wherever you are bound.”

“Indeed,” Iskandar says. He swings the satchel up over his shoulder, bracing the weight of its contents with no more concern than if they burdened him any more than the fall of the empty sack might. “Thank you once again for your hospitality and generosity. May it serve you well!” He lifts a hand to wave farewell to the man before turning towards the door. Waver is happy to follow him, or rather to take the lead in making their exit; he pulls the door wide and holds it for Iskandar behind him, blinking against the start of tears at the bright of the sudden sunlight. Iskandar steps past him and reaches to touch his shoulder to urge Waver forward into motion; Waver turns to follow, obeying the impetus of the other’s hold while the damp at his eyes keeps him half-blind.

“We’ll be back on the road for a time,” Iskandar tells him, speaking while Waver is still trying to clear his vision and still stumbling forward in obedience to the urging of the other’s hold. “Back to bedrolls and eating over a fire.” His thumb presses against Waver’s shoulder, the weight of it sliding over the give of the other’s shirt in a motion that might just be a means to steady the other’s stumbling footsteps but that still glows with the force of reassurance across the whole of Waver’s chest. “Think you’ll be able to adjust without much trouble, princeling?”

Waver shakes his head to clear the last haze from his vision and lifts his gaze, turning up towards the blaze of the oncoming dawn with his mouth set tight against it. The illumination is a glare in his eyes, enough to overcome the clarity of his vision and blind him for another moment, but he squints into it anyway, determined to not let the bright of the morning sun drag the forward motion of his feet.

“I’ll be fine,” he says, and takes a step forward to take the lead from Iskandar, even if only for a moment. “I told you, I was a farmboy first.”

Waver doesn’t turn for the rumble of Iskandar’s laugh over his shoulder, resists the urge to turn his head and see the beaming pleasure spread across the other’s face, but he can’t hold back the curve at his lips and he doesn’t try to, even as Iskandar takes a stride forward to meet and match Waver’s own forward pace.

It’s good to have that laugh to himself again.


	17. Spark

They travel farther their first day out of town than they have before. Waver’s legs are still achy and sore from the last few days of walking, and his blisters sting when he thinks of them too long, but within the first hour his feet have given up complaining as a futile pursuit, and by the time Iskandar slows to begin looking for a likely campsite Waver thinks his blisters are starting to give way to the surrender of calluses. He still hurts through most of his body -- his arms, from his effort with the bow, and his knees and hips from the constant, repetitive effort of striding forward to match Iskandar’s ground-eating stride -- but a good night’s sleep and a few full meals in a row have revitalized him mentally, if nothing else, and with that he’s able to keep trudging alongside Iskandar until the other finally lays claim to a likely clearing within the nearby trees as the sun is beginning to kiss the very edge of the horizon.

“Our innkeeper is a good man,” Iskandar says as he shrugs off the weight of their bedrolls and his own enormous sword, looking as fresh even after a full day of hiking as he appeared when they left the inn. Waver hardly thinks that’s fair -- his own shoulders are aching all the way up the back of his neck from the burden of his bow strung across his back -- but he’s beginning to accept that justice has very little to say when it comes to the relative strength between his body and Iskandar’s, and that what progress he will be able to track will come in comparing his growth to his past self rather than the enormous man striding alongside him like some figure from legend. Iskandar throws himself down onto the ground, now, groaning satisfaction as he stretches his legs out in front of him before bothering with unfurling the bedrolls out into the space around them. “His gift will save us from the trouble of hunting for a few days. We can make far better time without the need for hunting during the daylight hours just to make a meal.”

“The bread is good,” Waver admits as he slides his bow off his shoulder and makes a more careful process of lowering his aching body to the clearing. They made a breakfast of the rolls and sausage the man handed them on their way out of town; with food available without pausing to hunt they had even paused for a few bites sometime around noon so Iskandar could slice a two thick wedges of cheese and tear apart one of the loaves of bread for them to share. Iskandar finished his in the span of a few bites while Waver worked on his share for the next half-hour as they continued down the road, but even with the need to keep moving as he ate Waver found it one of the most delicious meals he’s ever eaten, even with the cheese crumbly from the chill in the air. “It would be even better with the cheese melted in over it.”

“That’s a clever thought,” Iskandar tells him. “And a good use of the fire. You’ll need that for warmth in any case.”

“I will,” Waver repeats, partially to offer agreement and partially to sigh over the specificity. “I still don’t see how you can go around without even sleeves to keep you warm.”

Iskandar laughs and slaps his hands against the broad span of the armor over his chest. “There’s so much more of me to provide heat, that’s all. It’s far harder for the wind to freeze when you have a stronger presence in the world.”

“Uh huh,” Waver sighs. “I’ll keep it in mind. For now, can we have that fire before my fingers go numb?”

“Certainly,” Iskandar says. “We’ll want to have something going by the time the sun has gone down. You can stay here and get the fire started while I collect firewood.”

Waver scoffs. “That’s easy,” he says, and catches his fingers in against each other to form out the shape to call fire into the curve of his cupped palms. “I can give you fire anytime you like, wood or no.”

“Of course you can,” Iskandar says, looking frustratingly unimpressed by the curl of scarlet flames rising from the cup of Waver’s hands. “And what about without your magic?”

Waver frowns at him. “Why do you keep insisting on that?” he demands. “I _do_ have magic, why shouldn’t I make use of it?”

“You do, and you should,” Iskandar agrees. “And what about when you’re in the middle of a snowstorm and so cold you can’t make use of your hands, or on the run from an opposing army and entirely drained of mana?” He reaches out to press his hand down against the top of Waver’s; Waver presses his thumbs tight together to snuff the flame before Iskandar can burn his palm against it as he lowers his hand to span the clasp of both of Waver’s at once. “Dependence on anything will leave you vulnerable in the moments you can least afford weakness,” Iskandar tells him. The sun is setting on the far side of the trees behind him; with the illumination coming from behind his head the red of his hair looks like an open flame of its own, outlined in the gold of heat as if the locks are catching alight even as the rest of the world drifts towards twilight. “It’s a sign of thorough preparation to seek out experience when you have the opportunity for such instead of waiting to be forced into necessity.”

Waver frowns and pulls his hands back and away from Iskandar’s touch. He can feel the radiance of the other’s body seeping into his own; even when he draws back it lingers like heat smouldering deep under the surface. “If you’re expecting me to figure out how to summon a fire without magic, it’s going to be a cold night for us both.”

Iskandar’s laugh is dark in his throat. “I suggest you begin as others do,” he says, and reaches into his pocket to draw free the weight of metal within. “Flint and steel applied to tinder have worked the same for mages and non-mages alike, in my experience.”

Waver frowns, more for the amusement on the other’s words than anything else. “Fine,” he says, and extends his hand for the metal Iskandar is holding out to him. “How does this work?”

“You must start with tinder.” Iskandar gets to his feet, moving smoothly as he turns to step away from the space they will make their campsite. “Luckily there’s plenty of dry wood after the autumn. Clear a space wider than the fire you intend to form.” Waver stands with painful intent, grimacing as he pushes to his feet so he can scuff at the accumulated branches and leaves beneath them to get down to clear ground. It’s straightforward enough to imitate what he’s seen Iskandar do on previous nights, even if his own magical fire has always been controlled easily enough to not require this level of preparation. He clears a circle nearly a pace wide and draws back the bedrolls and satchel of their present food supplies to a safe distance; by the time he’s returning to kneel at the edge of the cleared earth Iskandar is back as well, an array of small branches under one arm and a handful of twigs in his other hand. He drops the sticks to the side, casting them into a pile in easy reach from the edge of the cleared space, and takes up the position just alongside where Waver has folded himself into painful patience to wait for more instruction.

“We’ll start it with tinder,” Iskandar says. He sets the heap of twigs in the center of the cleared space and begins to pull them into a heap with remarkable dexterity for someone with such big hands. Under his touch they collect into a pyramid, a careful structure laid over the soft crumple of dried leaves and wood shavings he heaps in the very center of everything. “You need something for the sparks to catch on, and then sticks small enough that they can burn from just the little flames you have at the start.”

Waver sighs. “This would be easier with magic.”

“And less educational,” Iskandar tells him without any hesitation in offering the response. “You’re a scholar, are you not? You should relish this chance.” He draws his hands away from the delicate structure of wood fragments he’s made before him. “Next time I’ll have you set this up yourself, but for now all you’ll need to do is catch the tinder alight.” Iskandar reaches over Waver’s lap to the strips of metal in the other’s hold to draw away the longer of the two. “Brace the steel steady and then strike sparks off it with the flint, there in your hand.”

“Okay.” Waver takes the steel back, fumbling with it for a moment before he gets a good grip and steadies it against the ground at an angle. He hesitates for a moment, uncertain of himself; then sets his jaw and brings the flint around to scrape hard at the steel. There’s a flare of sparks startlingly close to his fingers and Waver jerks back and away, but they all flicker out as soon as they are lit, falling to the earth around them instead of against the tinder in the waiting twigs.

“Closer,” Iskandar says. “Aim towards the tinder itself.”

“I can see that myself,” Waver grumbles, but he does as suggested and brings the steel in nearer to the tumble of tinder that Iskandar has laid out. His second strike does somewhat better -- at least a few of the sparks go in roughly the direction he wants them too -- but for the most part they scatter wide, threatening the weight of his sleeves more than the waiting tinder under the twigs.

“Closer still,” Iskandar says again. “Here.” He leans in close to Waver’s shoulder and reaches around to catch his hand around the other’s grip; Waver tenses immediately, his hands seizing tight on the flint and steel as if his instinct fears the other is going to pull them away from him. Iskandar does no such thing; he just clasps his hands over Waver’s and pulls to tug the other out of his frozen tension until he can move him more easily.

“Lean forward,” Iskandar says. “Near, until your shadow is falling over the wood. Angle the steel up, like this, as if you’re scraping the sparks down the length to force them into the tinder.” His hold urges Waver’s hand closer to the steel and presses the flint down against it; Waver’s hold isn’t steady enough, and the flint catches at the steel to fall to the ground instead of illuminating into sparks as it should. Iskandar rumbles a laugh and lets Waver’s hand go so the other can pick up the length while his cheeks burn with far more heat than he’s called to his fire. Iskandar replaces his hold at once, his fingers bracing at the back of Waver’s wrist while his thumb steadies just at the base of the other’s. His hand is very warm against Waver’s skin.

“Steady,” Iskandar tells him as he brings Waver’s hands together at the right angle. “Don’t flinch. It’s no worse than that fire you play with so readily.”

“I’m _used_ to that,” Waver protests as he drags the flint over the steel and gets another handful of useless sparks. “I’ve never done this before.”

“If you only ever did things you’ve done before your life would be narrow indeed.” Iskandar’s voice seems warmer from this close up; maybe it’s just the flush still glowing in Waver’s face that is leaving him so radiant in comparison to the cool of the air around them. “Try again, princeling.”

Waver ducks his head far enough forward that the weight of his hair falls to curtain his face and sets his jaw tight. His hands feel shaky, as though they might start trembling against the hold of Iskandar’s, but his grip holds steady against the smooth metal as he brings the flint back down to strike hard at the steel. There’s a flare of illumination, a brief burst of starbright light that scatters out in an arc in front of Waver’s blow, and this time a pair of the sparks land atop the fragments of wood that make up the tinder. There’s a hiss of heat on wood, a burst of light, and then a curl of smoke rising up as the spark struggles to hold itself alight against the tinder. Waver’s hands tighten, his breath catches, and Iskandar hums a low note of approval and lets one of his hands go to clap at Waver’s shoulder.

“Well done,” he says. “Now we coax it into a flame.” He leans in this time, rather than talking Waver through the process; Waver watches him, his hands still braced tight around the flint and steel as he watches Iskandar lean in to purse his lips around a careful exhale of air to urge the smoke aside and the flame to life. For a moment Waver thinks the light will go out entirely, crushed out of existence by Iskandar’s too-forceful breath, but then the other pauses for an inhale and the flame leaps back into view, rising to clear illumination from the tinder now crackling with the heat spreading to it. Iskandar rumbles a laugh of satisfaction and blows one more breath over the threat of the flames, and by the time he’s drawing back the tinder is glowing bright as the flames lick up to wind and catch at the twigs set over them.

“There you are,” Iskandar says. “Your first fire, princeling.”

Waver huffs. “I hardly did anything,” he protests, but he’s smiling in spite of himself, and the expression just breaks wider over his face when Iskandar booms a laugh next to him that puts the fire in true danger for a moment before it rallies.

“Tomorrow you can do the whole of it,” Iskandar tells him, as if promising a particular treat. “For now keep feeding it until I return with more wood.” He gets to his feet easily, as if he doesn’t feel the strain of the miles they have crossed already today, and strides away from the clearing to return to the sunset-orange of the forest around them. Waver watches him go, attention idle against the length of Iskandar’s stride, and the swing of his shoulders, and the flare of light against the color of his hair; and then one of the twigs in his fledgling fire crackles and collapses inward, and he looks back with a surge of illogical panic to offer more fuel for the tiny pool of light before him.

He could always restart the fire with the use of magic, if he needed to; with Iskandar out of sight, there’s nothing to give him away, and the sigil-stoked flames would easily catch against even the largest of the branches Iskandar brought back. But the thought doesn’t even cross Waver’s mind, as he leans in to feed sticks to the slow-growing flame he struck to life, any more than he thinks about the ache of his knees against the resistance of the ground beneath him.


	18. Lull

A storm catches them three days later. Waver has been responsible for starting the fire after Iskandar’s first patient lesson; his second attempt, without the calm guidance of the other’s voice to walk him through it, requires four separate tries with steadily fraying patience before he can get sparks to catch the tinder and coax it into the flickering light of a fire no bigger than the one he could summon to his palms in a matter of seconds. But Iskandar is delighted with his success, and so effusive in his praise that Waver ends up smiling helplessly at the teacup-sized fire he successfully began, and he takes up the flint and steel without any prompting at all the next night. It gets easier every time, until he is beginning to think he might have some knack at this after all, in spite of his initial struggles.

It’s the next day that the storm strikes. The rain starts in the early afternoon, when the slide of the sun across the sky is only beginning to be eclipsed by the weight of clouds turning the blue overhead to a dark grey; for the first hour it’s a persistent drizzle, irritating and chill but relatively well-shed by the hoods of the cloaks they pull up over their faces. But the temperature keeps dropping, dragging lower as if urged there by the bite of the wind that seems to cut right through the rain-wet cloth intended to buffer them from its effects, and by the time Iskandar calls an early halt Waver’s boots have given in to the wet and his feet feel like blocks of ice more painful even than the blisters he nursed the first handful of days. Waver has no idea how to get a fire going, with the rain coming down more heavily with every breath and cutting deeper too; it speaks to how miserable their situation is, he thinks, when Iskandar tells him to make use of his magic so they can at least have some heat. Waver does so, happy even in his slow-growing confidence with the firestarter to rely on the ease of tracing the sigil for heat into a rain-drenched log and calling the glow of flames to crackle against the outside of it, and with Iskandar’s help he even scrapes out a circle around the whole of their close-clustered camp so he can put up a barrier against the water rapidly turning to the more aggressive discomfort of sleet. The air hardens a few feet above even Iskandar’s towering head, the sleet hits the surface and skids off, and Iskandar and Waver are left to seek out what comfort they can find for themselves from the sodden weight of their clothes and the radiance of the fire.

It’s better than it would be otherwise, Waver decides, but that doesn’t make their situation pleasant. They have a little of the innkeeper’s cheese left but the bread is long since gone, and even with long hours of the night before them Iskandar doesn’t make any motion towards the surely hopeless task of attempting hunting in the storm. The barrier overhead keeps the ice from biting their skin directly but Waver can’t make a dome of it without suffocating them both in the smoke from their own fire, and the space that sets the smoke free also lets the harsh angle of the wind cut through their clothes to press pain against their skin. Iskandar lays out their bedrolls as close to the fire as they can be to dry some of the rainwater damp from them, but the ground is still wet enough that the best Waver can manage for himself is to perch on a boulder and dump some of the liquid from his waterlogged boots in hopes that it might allow a little more warmth to reach his toes. Iskandar shares out the food left to them, and Waver lingers over the cheese half-melted to some greater heat over the glow of their fire; and then he gives up on comfort, and crawls into his bedroll to huddle against the chill of the wind for what relief unconsciousness might be able to grant him. He lies shivering alongside the fire, as close as he can get without catching himself alight, until discomfort and exhaustion finally overcome his awareness of the world and pull him down into fretful rest.

He thinks it’s a nightmare, at first. His dreams are hazy, fragmented around his physical discomfort and filled with specters that wield cold like daggers to cut and pierce the living heat of his body; for the first shake he takes the motion as proof of the same, another strangely vehement ghost risen from the depths of his unconsciousness. But the motion doesn’t ease, even when Waver whimpers and flails against it, and the contact is more warm than it is bone-deep chill, and it’s as Waver’s attention swims back up to the teeth-chattering cold that has sunk into him that he begins to make sense of the familiar voice pulled tight around some unknown emotion.

“Princeling.” Waver stirs, turning his head down to hide his face from the cold of the wind; but there’s pressure at his shoulder, an ungentle motion rattling him back to consciousness. “Wake up. You must open your eyes and hear me.” Another shake, so strong Waver is nearly knocked onto his back outright. “ _Waver_.”

Waver groans and lifts a hand from the weight of the bedroll wrapped around him to push vaguely against the hand holding his shoulder. It feels like fire against his fingertips, so hot he hisses and snatches his touch back. “I’m sleeping.”

“You’re freezing.” It’s Iskandar’s voice, Waver’s hazy thoughts supply; and of course it’s Iskandar’s hand at his shoulder that is shaking him to consciousness with such force. “If you do not wake you will die here.” Another shake. Waver feels like his frozen limbs are going to snap right off his body with the force the other is exerting on him. “As my vassal, I order you to open your eyes.”

Waver opens his eyes. It’s harder than he thought it would be -- his eyelids feel impossibly heavy, as if they’re weighted with lead to hold them shut against whatever demands Iskandar or the world may make of him -- but Iskandar is still shaking him, and there wasn’t any space for disobedience in that command. Waver blinks, struggling to clarify his bleary gaze, and the shadow leaning over him coalesces into the familiarity of Iskandar’s features, red beard and wideset eyes and broad mouth so often spreading on a smile. There’s no smile at his lips now; his mouth is flat, his eyes dark, and as Waver blinks up at him he realizes there’s a weight to the other’s jaw, a set tension of focus that doesn’t shift even as a hand comes out to press against the side of Waver’s face.

“You’re too cold,” Iskandar tells him. Waver thinks this much is obvious, with how hot Iskandar’s palm feels against his cheek, but he finds it harder to speak than he expected, with how stiff his lips are, and he’s barely struggled into a breath to answer when Iskandar’s hand pushes up into his hair. “And you’re still rain-wet. You’re not getting enough heat from the fire.”

“I’m cold,” Waver manages. That isn’t what he had meant to say, when he took a breath to speak, but his shoulders are quaking with chill, and his breath is rasping in his chest, and some part of the warmth of Iskandar’s touch at his skin and the steady rumble of his voice offers comfort that Waver’s instincts capitulate to with a childlike need for reassurance. “Iskandar, I’m...I’m so cold.”

Iskandar’s hand ruffles through Waver’s hair. “I know,” he says. “We’re going to take care of that.” His hand pulls away, his touch at Waver’s head and his hold at Waver’s shoulder; Waver feels the loss with an ache in his chest, but it’s far-off, and without the demands of Iskandar’s touch holding him to the present he can feel himself drifting back towards sleep, lulled down to rest by the stillness and chill in his bones. His eyes drift shut, his head weights at the bedroll, and then the bedroll itself shifts, swung up and away from its position, and Waver’s eyes come open again on pure shock. Iskandar is picking him up, scooping Waver and bedroll together up into his arms before he steps forward over the crackle of their fire to the side where his own bedding is laid out.

“Stay awake,” Iskandar says as he kneels atop his own bedroll to fit Waver into the narrow gap between his own blankets and the glow of the fire. Waver flinches from the proximity of the flames crackling so close to his ear but Iskandar doesn’t seem concerned; or, at least, he doesn’t seem concerned about the flames themselves. “If you fall asleep you won’t wake again.”

“I’m awake,” Waver attempts, although he’s not sure Iskandar is listening or even that his words are articulate enough to be sensible. Iskandar is stripping off the weight of his armor with easy speed; Waver realizes that the other hasn’t slept at all yet, but must have been lingering over their fire watching Waver himself shivering in the grip of uneasy nightmares as the chill set into the core of his being. The thought flickers something in Waver’s chest, a glimmer of what might have been heat, back when he had such available to him, that might have stained his cheeks to red earlier that morning; but there’s not enough warmth in him to muster the color, now, and all he does is lie still while Iskandar sheds his leather armor and pulls the edge of his shirt free from his pants. Waver’s thoughts are slow and dragging, like he’s trying to squint clarity into something seen on the far side of deep water; it’s only as Iskandar’s shirt comes up and over his head that he realizes the insanity of what the other is doing.

“What,” Waver attempts, but he’s speaking too softly and Iskandar doesn’t look up. Waver clears his throat and tries again. “What are you doing?”

“I intend to save your life, princeling,” Iskandar tells him. He looks down to push his boots off his feet along with the damp weight of his socks before reaching to pull back the fold of his bedroll so he can fit himself into the space of it. He doesn’t appear at all discomfited by the chill of the wind against his bare skin, even as Waver goes on trembling with cold even wrapped in as many layers of blankets as he can lay hand to; Waver is still staring hazy disbelief at the other when Iskandar reaches out to pull open the front of Waver’s own bedroll.

Waver flinches from the cold, retreating back from the threat of the open air against his wet clothes as a fresh surge of ice washes over him, but Iskandar doesn’t seem to notice this any more than he listens to the gasp of pain thus dragged from Waver’s chest. He’s still moving with a speed efficient but not hasty as he reaches to pull against Waver’s wet shirt and urge it up off his chest. Waver reaches to grab at the bottom edge of the fabric to hold it where it is but his grip is too weak to achieve any real resistance; it’s only Iskandar hesitating that actually gives him a moment to speak.

“What are you _doing_ ,” Waver repeats, with somewhat more force than he managed before. “I thought you wanted to _help_.”

“I am,” Iskandar says. His voice is level and calm; his speech seems impossibly steady to Waver’s cold-rattled thoughts. “You’re losing heat to the wet of your clothes. If you keep them on you’ll freeze to death before the dawn.”

“I don’t see how this will make it better,” Waver protests, but he lacks the strength to even give his words any true force, much less offer the resistance they might merit. When Iskandar pulls at the hem of his shirt he lets his arms be drawn up over his head to strip him down to bare skin, even as the hiss of the wind pebbles every inch of him with cold sharper than anything he’s ever felt before. “Must I be completely bare for this rescue plan of yours?”

Iskandar’s laugh is a rumble against the span of his chest; even the sound of it seems impossibly warm to Waver’s ears. “It’s good that you have energy enough for teasing,” he says. “This will be sufficient, I think.” Waver’s shirt and coat come up over his head and free his arms; he folds them in over his chest, seeking out what cover they can grant him even if his forearms are as ice-chilled as the rest of him. Iskandar pushes Waver’s shirt out over his head, somewhere towards the glow of the fire behind the other, and then he reaches out for the other’s shoulders to fit his hold between the weight of Waver’s bedroll and the span of his shaking body. His skin burns as if with fire on contact with Waver’s own, until Waver hisses as much at the stinging heat as from shock at the touch, but Iskandar doesn’t wait for Waver to move himself. He just pulls instead, urging Waver in towards him and the warmth of his chest until Waver’s chilled arms are pinned between his chest and the broad span of Iskandar’s and Waver is as much in the other’s bedroll as in his own.

“Your blankets are as wet as your shirt,” Iskandar notes. “It’s no wonder you were so chilled.” He pulls at the weight of Waver’s bedroll, heaping it up over the top of his own to make a heavy layer that drapes over the both of them together, but his other arm stays across the back of Waver’s bare shoulders, pressing them skin-to-skin even as he moves so Waver can feel the flex of Iskandar’s chest as he pulls at the blankets.

“There,” Iskandar finally says, apparently satisfied with the pile of blankets he’s all but buried them under. “That should keep us for the night.” He slides his arm back into the cover of the bedrolls, catching at the top edge as he goes to draw it up nearly to his own eyes and well over the top of Waver’s head. Waver shudders over an exhale, feeling as if he’s breathing chill into the glow of a cozy room, but even the cold spilling over Iskandar’s skin isn’t enough for the other to so much as flinch. His touch drops to Waver’s hair instead, his fingers seeking out the weight of the tangled strands from the dark enveloping them both and stroking down through the locks with unselfconscious affection.

“Relax.” Iskandar’s voice is muffled by the weight of the blankets drawn up over Waver’s ears and echoes strangely in the cavern the other has made for them, but as close as they are Waver can feel the vibrations against his cold-clenched hands, can almost understand the words from the rhythm they form in the breadth of the chest before him. “You won’t freeze like this.” Iskandar shifts his weight slightly, a mountain rearranging a few boulders into greater comfort, and sighs hugely, like he’s letting the strain of the day go. “If you uncross your arms you will warm up far faster.”

“My hands are freezing,” Waver protests.

Iskandar rocks back fractionally to tip over on his hip. His hand drops from Waver’s hair to follow the line of the other’s shoulder down his arm to his tight-clenched fingers; Waver doesn’t make a conscious decision to lift his arm but it doesn’t make a difference, with Iskandar’s strength to urge his hand into motion out and around the wall of the other’s chest. Iskandar’s palm presses against Waver’s hand, urging down until Waver’s fingers uncurl against the muscle of his back, and Waver gusts a breath of relief at the glow of heat he finds waiting under the press of his touch. He doesn’t need urging for his other hand; he’s reaching at once, shifting to wiggle his fingers in under Iskandar’s hip so he can wrap both arms around the span of the other’s chest. His fingertips barely meet at the middle of Iskandar’s back, even the full span of his arms not quite enough to wrap around the breadth of the other man’s presence, but if Iskandar is as broad as a tree he’s far warmer than one, and right now Waver cares more about that than maintaining any kind of dignity. He presses as close against Iskandar’s bare chest as he can get, pinning his forehead and nose against the radiance of the other’s skin as his fingers spread out to catch as much of the warmth of the other’s existence at his palms as he can find, and over the top of his head Iskandar rumbles a laugh and lifts his hand to Waver’s hair again. His fingers stroke through the strands, wandering idle focus through the dark while his other hand presses steadying weight at Waver’s spine to hold him in place, and Waver breathes in deep inhales of the humid heat of Iskandar’s body and feels the tension in his shoulders ease and unravel with every one he manages.

Waver doesn’t know how long it’s been when he notices the silence. The sound of the sleet has been a constant, rattling against the leaves overhead and splattering wet and chill against the barrier over their fire; but the peace is so welcome, and Waver so caught in the slow spread of warmth through his veins, that it takes him longer than it should to realize that he can’t hear the rain anymore. He lifts his head to look up, trying to catch a glimpse of the world outside, but the blankets are too close, or the night is too dark, and all he can see is the line of Iskandar’s throat before him.

“Iskandar?” Waver’s voice is strangely soft, as if muffled by his own uncertainty, but he doesn’t try to make it louder. “Why is it so quiet?”

Iskandar’s shoulders shift, his chest flexes as he adjusts himself. “The rain has stopped,” he says, his voice distant and soft like Waver’s own. “It’s snowing.”

Waver blinks. “Oh.”

Iskandar’s chest expands on a breath before he lets it go in a long shudder of sound. When he ducks his head his beard catches at Waver’s hair to tangle in against the weight of it.

“We’re safe like this,” he says. The rumble of his voice is as much reassurance as his words, even before his hand slides back up to cradle Waver’s head against his chest as if to press the other against the warmth of his body. “Sleep, princeling.”

The forest is very quiet, caught under the blanket of the snow drifting down around them; with his head under the blankets Waver can’t even hear the crackle of their fire as the heavy logs smoulder into a dull, lingering glow. But his eyes are heavy, and his body is exhausted, and when he turns his head he can hear the sound of the ocean, the rhythm of Iskandar’s heart thumping in his chest as regular as waves lapping against a distant beach. It’s a comfort, glowing warmth into him even as he trembles with the last shivers of fading chill, and Waver drifts into sleep with the lullaby of Iskandar’s presence to carry him there.


	19. Idle

Waver wakes to the sound of Iskandar breathing. Breathing is a forgiving term; what he’s actually doing is snoring, long, dragging rumbles of sound that seem to vibrate through the whole of his chest with every breath he lets free. It would be frustrating if Waver were actually trying to sleep, or if he were interested in silence; but he’s drowsy with the lingering effects of a full night’s rest, and warm with the indulgent comfort that comes with an awareness of cold air around him and the glowing heat of his own body.

He’s still as he was when he slipped into dreams the night before: buried underneath both bedrolls at once, his entire body from heels to head fully covered under the weight of the blankets over him. He’s radiant in his own body, now, far more so than during his first ill-fated attempt at rest the night before, but he thinks even more than his own body heat it’s the furnace of Iskandar against him that is keeping him so pleasantly warm. They’ve shifted in the night -- Waver reclaimed his arm from under the numbing weight of Iskandar’s body to press in between his chest and the other man’s, and Iskandar’s hand in his hair has fallen slack against the blankets under them with the weight of the other’s sleep -- but the bedrolls are intended for one more than two, and the chill of the air outside has kept them pressing flush together even through the long stillness of the night. Waver still has one arm draped over Iskandar’s waist and his fingers hanging slack against the flex of the other’s bare back; Iskandar has Waver pinned down beneath the weight of an arm slung around the other’s shoulders and a leg stretched out to hold Waver’s to such stillness that he can feel the tingle of numbness in his toes where he’s been too still for too long. There’s the catch of Iskandar’s beard at the top of Waver’s head, where the scratch of the short bristles are tangling to tug against individual strands of dark hair; but Iskandar isn’t moving yet, is still breathing in the deep inhales of true sleep, and for all that Waver is awake he doesn’t really want to extricate himself from the bedrolls and emerge into the cold of the air to retrieve his shirt and independence. He stays where he is instead, his eyes shut and his breathing as steady as he can keep it, and he lets his attention wander over the indulgence of Iskandar so near against him.

The difference in their bodies is obvious, like this. It’s been clear enough whenever they stand close together; Waver is hardly short for his age, but Iskandar tops him by a full head, so Waver is left staring at the flex of corded muscle in the other’s shoulders if they are standing before each other. But it’s not just the height that grants Iskandar the advantage: he’s big in every other dimension as well, from the solid strength of the muscle in his thighs to the flex across his chest and in his arms that makes such child’s play of the enormous sword he carries with him. Usually the comparison makes Waver feel skinny and fragile, as if he really is the child Iskandar first took him for; right now it’s a comfort, to feel so bound by the strength of the other’s body against him. Waver feels like the rest of the world might as well not exist, as if he might really be safe with those shoulders to stand between him and the dangers that have laid themselves over his life, and if he would protest that aloud were someone else to say it it feels a pleasure, now, shuddering down his spine with a glow of reassurance that he can feel through the whole of his body.

Waver shifts his head, lifting his chin to press his nose a little closer against the planes of the broad chest before him as he takes a breath in. Iskandar smells like the leather of his armor, and the weight of his shirt, and the firesmoke burden of the blankets around them; but mostly he smells like himself, with the sweat of their travels clinging to his skin to give him a heavy, musky scent all his own. It ought to be off-putting, Waver thinks, he’s sure he would find it that way on someone else; but there’s something appealing to it against Iskandar’s skin, as if Waver can feel the glow of Iskandar’s unbearable presence cast to heat against his body. He presses in closer, nuzzling against the rhythm of the other’s heart beating steady-certain in his chest while his own heartbeat comes faster in his own, as his blood stirs with heat enough to tighten his hold on Iskandar’s waist and to flex his thighs to work his hips in closer against the weight of Iskandar’s body pinning him down.

“If you mean to rouse my desire, princeling, I believe we can find ways to stay warm even without the bedrolls at all, but if you are still asleep you may wish to wake from your dream.”

Iskandar’s voice seems very loud in Waver’s ears, even with the muffled effect of the blankets drawn up over his head; Waver jerks with the surge of panic that hits him, flinching back from Iskandar’s body with an intake of breath so sharp it comes out as a gasp. His hasty motion pushes him back against the edge of the bedrolls around them, which come open to let what feels like a flood of ice rush in and over Waver’s back, and he chokes over a sound of protest that strangles itself on the flex of pained chill that grips his chest.

“Woah,” Iskandar laughs. “Come back, no need to freeze.” Waver doesn’t have much choice in the matter; Iskandar’s arm is pulling against him to bring him back in against the flat of the other’s chest. Waver can feel Iskandar sigh over a breath even while his own chest is too tight on panic to let him breathe. “Are you awake now? Feeling better than you were last night?”

“I’m fine,” Waver manages to choke out. His arms are caught between his body and Iskandar’s but it still feels like nothing like enough distance, not when his heart is still thundering in his chest and every breath he takes fills his lungs with the heat of Iskandar’s body so near to his own. His shoulders are still tense from the brief chill of the air outside the bedrolls; even as warm as he is now, it’s a reminder of the awful chill that wracked him the previous night, and of Iskandar’s efforts to bring him back to something like sustainable heat. Waver presses his lips tight together and struggles for something to offer around the burn of self-consciousness at his cheeks to ease the guilty debt in his chest; finally he shuts his eyes and ducks his head forward to hide his face against Iskandar’s chest as he huffs an exhale into the heat of the bedrolls around them.

“Thank you,” he mumbles, more softly than he should but as loud as he can manage. Even then the words sound strained, as if he’s forcing them instead of offering them with the uncomfortable sincerity they truly bear. “You saved my life.”

“Indeed,” Iskandar rumbles, without any indication of particular embarrassment about this agreement. “You were nearly frozen solid on your own.” He shifts his leg where it’s still weighting to pin Waver’s to the blankets beneath them. “You’re certainly warm enough now, princeling.”

He could just mean the glow of comfort in Waver’s skin against his; with how near they are the heat is impossible to miss. But self-consciousness drops Waver’s thoughts immediately to the heat of his arousal pressing the front of his pants against Iskandar’s thigh before him, and in the first flush of horrified embarrassment even the chill outside the blankets isn’t as intimidating as the thought of staying where he is against the solid weight of Iskandar’s body against his, so welcome the night before and so overwhelming now. Waver pushes backwards at once, struggling to kick himself free of the blankets with more haste than dignity, and even Iskandar’s questioning noise of protest and the instant pebbling across his skin isn’t enough to persuade him back to the haven of the bedrolls.

“I’m fine,” Waver says, with significantly more hope than honesty, and turns away to hide his face until the cold has chased away some part of his flush. He’s trembling with chill even as he ducks in to kneel alongside the coals of the log that served them last night; his body is tensing with all the force available to make a coherent protest to the cold. It’s only habit that lets Waver sketch out the shape of the sigil for flame in the air over the coals, and only practice, he thinks, that lets the same coax even a faint flicker of heat into the ashes of the burnt-through log.

Something dark and cold falls over the top of Waver’s head. “Does that then mean you’re trying to freeze yourself again?” Iskandar’s voice is amused even around the burden of the fabric swathing Waver’s face; Waver struggles to free himself, but he thinks it’s more the help of Iskandar’s hands tugging his shirt down over his bare chest that succeeds in actually covering him from the morning chill. His clothes are cold from the night out, Waver flinches and hisses away from them as they touch his skin, but they’re better than the ice of the snow-chilled breeze wandering under the barrier still in place over them and heavy with snow. Iskandar’s hand presses to Waver’s shoulders to offer gentle reassurance as Waver reaches up to finger-comb his hair back into order. “Even if they’re cold, you’ll be better off with more clothes than less.”

Waver looks back over his shoulder to scowl at Iskandar. He’s emerged from the bedroll himself, as least to sit cross-legged atop the blankets rather than under them, and is still very much absent any clothing but the pants he kept on for the length of the night. Waver ducks his head to look away again as he pushes roughly at the hem of his shirt. “I suppose this doesn’t apply to kings, is that it?”

Iskandar’s laugh is loud enough Waver expects the snow heaped on the branches overhead to slide free and slump to a pile against his barrier. “Certainly it does,” he says. There’s a rustle of sound from over Waver’s shoulder; Waver resists the urge to look back and watch the movement of muscle in Iskandar’s chest and shoulders as the other pulls his shirt back on over his head to cover himself again. “Of the two of us it’s your resilience I am most concerned with.”

“Thanks very much,” Waver deadpans. He drops to sit alongside the remains of the fire -- at least the snowfall has left the ground frozen to hardness instead of muddy as it was the night before -- so he can reach for his ice-crusted boots and pull those onto his feet as well. He gets them on, even if they feel heavy and crackle with the water they absorbed with the rain, before he returns his attention to frowning over the coals of the fire and trying to warm his cold-aching hands. The log is thoroughly burnt, as it turns out; even Waver’s best sigil doesn’t hold more than a few seconds’ worth of heat, and Waver thinks he would have to be holding the coal in his bare hand to gain any effect from it for his fast-chilling fingers.

A hand lands at his shoulder. “Come, princeling.” Iskandar is entirely dressed, when Waver looks up from his efforts with the burnt-out fire; even his usual broad grin in back in place and steady enough that it doesn’t give way even when Waver frowns up at him. “Let’s get the warmth of some exercise in your veins before we break camp and return to the road!”

“Exercise,” Waver repeats, skepticism clear even past the shiver at his teeth. “What _kind_ of exercise?”

Iskandar leans over to lay hand to the bowstaff laid out on the ground and straightens to offer it, along with a grin that doesn’t fade even when Waver groans incoherent protest. “Come, princeling, you will never improve if you don’t practice!”

“I’m not going to improve _now_ ,” Waver complains. “I can’t feel my fingers, more than likely I’ll take one of them off just trying to string the damn thing.” But he’s pushing to his feet all the same -- the coals of the fire are causing more frustration than aid, at this point -- and when Iskandar drops a hand to his shoulder to urge him into the crackle of the fresh snow around them he moves forward without any but token complaints.

He could do with something more constructive to think on than his early-morning imagination, anyway.


	20. Appreciation

“Higher,” Iskandar says. “You’re still aiming too low, you’ll fall short of the mark like that.”

“I’m looking right at it,” Waver protests. “How am I supposed to aim if I’m not pointing the arrow at the target?” But he lifts the bow all the same, drawing it up by a few inches until the point of the arrow braced against the support of his finger is above the knot on the tree Iskandar pointed out as the target for the day. “Like that?”

“Better.” Iskandar gets to his feet from where he’s been sitting as he gauges Waver’s position; Waver doesn’t turn to watch him as he comes forward, but that doesn’t stop the hairs at the back of his neck from prickling with awareness of the proximity of the other man as Iskandar steps in behind him to lean down and look along his shoulder at the line of the arrow in his hold. His hair catches at Waver’s, ruffling the strands over the other’s scalp as he squints down the aim of the arrow at the target; if Waver turned his head at all his jaw would brush the friction of Iskandar’s beard. He sets his lips together and keeps staring straight ahead, focusing himself on holding his arms steady against the strain of the bow in his grip and the arrow at his hold.

“Up a little more,” Iskandar says finally, and reaches out to touch a pair of fingers just under Waver’s wrist. Waver jerks up more sharply than he intends to, flinching from the heat of Iskandar’s touch, but Iskandar just rumbles a laugh and reaches to catch Waver’s wrist steady in his hold. “Just a little” and he urges the other down, steadying Waver’s arm against the resistance of the bow and the drawn arrow. Iskandar’s grip is unwavering, even as Waver’s wrist trembles with effort in his hold; when he reaches around it’s to curl his fingers atop the other’s where Waver is pulling back the string almost to his ear.

“Right there,” Iskandar says, his voice as resonant as ever but softer, now, with how near he is to Waver’s ear. “See that notch in the tree trunk? Aim that high above the target.” His fingers flex; for a moment the weight of the bow and the strain of the string ease from Waver’s aching arms and fingers, softened by the aid of Iskandar’s support. “Keep the arrow straight and your elbow right here, clear of the string. Breathe out.” Iskandar’s exhale is smooth against Waver’s hair; Waver’s comes from him in a rush, his lungs emptying themselves at once in spite of his best efforts to ease the action. Iskandar’s hold tightens, pulling his attention back from the ache in his chest to the line of the bow, the tension of the string, the rustle of the wind against his skin.

“Good,” Iskandar says, and lets his hands ease and fall. “And release.” For a moment Waver is standing perfectly still, his arm raised into the careful arc Iskandar’s hold guided him towards and his fingers bracing the arrow back towards his ear in a straight-line path towards the tree; then his grip eases, unfolding from the line of the bowstring with deliberation instead of the failing of overworked muscle, and the arrow snaps forward, urged along its path by the string pulling itself forward. Waver watches it fly, swept away from him by the force he imparted to it, before it hits the tree with a solid _thunk_ and sticks quivering a bare fingerwidth shy of the target Iskandar indicated.

Iskandar’s laugh is a boom of delight, so close to Waver’s ear that he would flinch were he not grinning startled disbelief of his own. “There!” Iskandar’s arm loops around Waver’s waist to pull him back, his other hand catches to ruffle through the dark of the other’s hair; Waver grabs at Iskandar’s wrist to brace himself but he’s smiling too wide to muster protest, even if his heart weren’t pounding with the adrenaline of success and happiness in equal parts. “We’ll make an archer of you yet, princeling!”

“I didn’t even aim myself,” Waver says, although there’s not much force to his words. “You’re the one who lined up the shot, all I did was let go of the string.”

“No,” Iskandar says, loosening his hold enough so Waver’s feet touch the ground again and he can stumble into a turn to look up at the other. Waver does so at once, turning to look up through his hair at Iskandar’s face and firmly ignoring the flicker of something like loss that presses in his chest alongside the new breath of air he’s taken to fill his lungs. “You could barely hold the bow steady at all when we departed your country. Now all you require is some minor adjustment to your aim to hit a target.” Iskandar’s grin is too infectious for Waver to resist, even when the other ruffles his hair up over his head in his habitual expression of approval. “You’ve improved more rapidly than I had expected of even you.”

“Thanks very much,” Waver says, trying for the closest to deadpan he can muster with his face glowing with pleasure and satisfaction at his success. He ducks away from Iskandar’s touch so he can reach up and occupy himself with pushing his hair back into some kind of order. “At least I haven’t been _quite_ as much of a burden as you thought I would be.”

Waver is offering the comfort of self-deprecation, of words designed to cut back on himself enough to tamp down some of the childish pleasure he can’t help but feel with Iskandar beaming at him as he is. But when Waver looks up Iskandar is gazing at him with sincere attention in his eyes instead of the flippant dismissal Waver was attempting, and when he shakes his head in rejection it’s with the same direct honesty behind the motion.

“Not at all,” Iskandar says. “The last weeks have been difficult and you have faced them with determination enough to make you a worthy companion.” He presses a hand to Waver’s shoulder, the burden of his touch weighty but radiant with heat Waver can feel spreading through the whole of his body from that point of contact. “I am glad to be travelling at your side, Waver Velvet.”

Waver presses his lips tight together and clenches his grip on the bow in his hand. He can feel his arm trembling with the effort but he doesn’t loosen his hold; he’s afraid that if he does he might lose his grip on the emotion straining at his chest and knotting his throat with the threat of tears as intense as they are abrupt. “Oh.” Waver’s voice is shaky, even over that one word, and he’s sure his expression is a complete giveaway for the wet starting at his eyes, but Iskandar just beams at him as broadly as if Waver had laughed aloud and pats at his shoulder with comforting force.

“We will complete this journey together, princeling,” he says, his voice as warm with sincerity as the smile all across his broad face. “Whatever you may have faced in your home country, you have more than earned yourself a place of respect in my own.”

Waver has to duck his head, at that, even knowing the gesture will certainly give away the wet that is spilling over his lashes in spite of his best efforts to fight it back. Iskandar rumbles over a laugh more affectionate than amused, and as Waver lifts his arm from his side to rub the rough of his sleeve over his eyes Iskandar’s arm comes around his shoulders to pull him in against the other’s chest. Waver stumbles to the force, unable to resist the pull or to think about whether he would choose to, and then he’s pinned close against Iskandar’s chest, held in place by the arm steady around his shoulders. The tension in his chest draws taut to push back against the comfort of the contact for a moment; and then Iskandar sighs an exhale over Waver’s hair, and Waver’s shoulders go slack at once. He ducks his head forward to press his forehead to Iskandar’s chest, and lets his hand slide down to fist a hold against the weight of the shirt under Iskandar’s leather armor, and when he breathes out he feels the tension in his chest ease, even if just for a moment.

Waver’s eyes are wet and red by the time Iskandar lets him free to draw back and collect himself, but the other doesn’t say anything about it, and Waver thinks he might be more grateful to that gesture of kindness than anything else.


	21. Expansive

“We had been on the road for nearly a month by that point,” Iskandar is saying, speaking in the overloud tone that he always seems to use for these stories, whether they’re in the common room of an inn or striding down an abandoned wagon track around a thinning forest as they are now. “My soldiers would follow me anywhere, but even they felt the weight of a long campaign after that much time away from their homes.”

“I bet.” Waver doesn’t really need to give answers -- he’s learned that once started Iskandar is ever ready to push onward into the point of whatever story he wishes to tell, regardless of the responsiveness of his audience -- but he’s caught up in spite of himself, his attention held to the resonance of the other man’s voice and the intensity that rings in every word. It makes it sound as if he’s telling the story of some great hero out of legend, one of those noble beings more myth than fact, rather than recounting the tale of one of his own exploits. Waver wishes he could find this approach frustrating; certainly there’s more than a small amount of arrogance that comes with the telling, as Iskandar makes himself his own doting historian. But it’s hard to hold to frustration when Waver is more enraptured by the telling than anything else, and he finds his heart beating harder in spite of himself with the drama of Iskandar’s intonation, as if he is standing on the muddy campground and feeling the chill of rain against his shoulders along with the rest of the other man’s followers. “Didn’t they start to talk of retreat?”

“Never,” Iskandar says, as proud at this indication of his men’s stamina as if their resilience is representative of his own. “It is as I tell you, princeling. Armies will follow their commanders from obligation, with the weight of their duty upon them. But these men are my personal force, all of them sworn to me directly.” He lifts his head up to the glow of the sunlight against them and smiles into the unseasonable blue of the sky as if it is a gift to him alone; Waver watches him sidelong, his gaze tracking the blaze of color in Iskandar’s beard and against his vivid hair while he remains unseen in the shadow of the other’s inattention. “They swear to follow me for my own merit, not for the glory of my kingdom. Their devotion is unquestionable. Even if I were to ask them to storm the underworld itself they would follow me there without a murmur.”

Waver shakes his head and looks back down to his feet. “That’s crazy.” He frowns at the hard-packed earth underfoot and scuffs the toe of his boot through the dirt to kick up a plume of dust ahead of them. “How do you inspire that kind of devotion in someone?”

“It’s about being a king,” Iskandar says, giving an immediate response to the question Waver had intended mostly as a rhetorical complaint to himself. Waver looks back up at him, his attention drawn helplessly to the weight of the other’s voice over the words; Iskandar is gazing out before them again, his eyes set on the distant horizon rather than on Waver next to him. It makes something in Waver’s chest twist, pins an ache in against the rhythm of his heartbeat, until he can’t decide if he’s more jealous of the path forward for holding Iskandar’s attention or of Iskandar himself for whatever beauty it is that his eyes can form out of a clear sky and an open road. He’d like to look away, if he could, to push away the painful awareness of the gap between them even as they walk side-by-side down the road, but he can no more pull his gaze from Iskandar’s face than he can stifle the tremor of sensation that runs under his skin in answer to the resonance of the other’s words.

“Men follow a dream.” Iskandar is striding forward, taking long, ground-covering steps to hurry them along; Waver is used to this, at least, and he doesn’t have to look down to speed his own pace to keep up with the greater length of the other’s steps. “If you hold a dream worth sharing, it will be enough to earn their loyalty. More than words, more than honor: if your men share your dream, they will chase it to the very ends of the earth to share in the winning of it with you.”

Waver’s breath gusts out of him, spilling to a sigh that quivers even as he gives it voice. Iskandar is still looking forward, still gazing up as if he means to stride into the air and rise above the petty concerns of the earth; but Waver has to drop his head forward, has to let the strain in his neck ease as he drops his gaze to the uneven footing before them. “Yeah,” he says, agreement and resignation in equal measures on his tongue and at his lips. “I don’t think I’ve ever had a dream like that.”

A hand comes down against his back, the impulse firm but not so much that it knocks him off his feet. Waver looks back up in spite of himself, startled by the contact at his shoulders, to find Iskandar looking at him, now, head tipped down so he can smile at Waver next to him.

“There is no shame in that,” Iskandar tells him. “You will find your path yet, princeling.” His smile goes wider, pulling up into a grin at the corner of his mouth as his hand slides up to brace close against Waver’s shoulder and pull the other in nearer to his side. “Perhaps you may yet come to share my own.”

Waver wants to laugh at this, wants to scoff at Iskandar’s teasing and retreat to the safety of the distance between them again. But Iskandar is gazing full into his face, and for all that his smile is broad there’s no indication of mockery in the warm dark of his eyes. There’s just invitation, open and expansive and utterly sincere, and for a moment Waver can see the appeal of it, to offering up his own uncertain self-direction in exchange for the guidance of that arm around his shoulders, of those eyes that see some future he can’t imagine. There would be a comfort to it, to be sure; there could even be a glory in it, in following those firm steps. Waver is likely to find more respect in the shadow of Iskandar’s broad shoulders than in any illumination he can struggle into claiming for himself; and it would be a place to belong, as he never fit in the quiet comfort of the farmhouse, as all his efforts have never given him a position in a palace.

“I--” Waver starts, his throat stammering over the words, his chest struggling for air; and then they crest the rise of the hill they’ve been ascending, emerging from the dappled shade of the trees around them and out onto the height of a ridge, and light flashes up and into Waver’s eyes to blind him into squinting pain. Waver hisses, dropping his gaze and lifting his arm at once to block his face from the sudden flare of light against his features, and his forward steps falter to stillness while he blinks against the burn at his eyes that has knocked everything else well clear of his thoughts.

“Ow,” he manages, pressing the palms of his hands against his eyes to wipe away the sunlight-summoned tears before he raises one hand to his forehead to shed some of the light so he can squint down into the valley below them. “What _is_ \--” and his words die for the second time in as many minutes, his breath swept away by the sight laid out before him as thoroughly as language is knocked free of his mind.

It’s not just a valley. They are standing on a ridge overlooking the space before them, with the ground sloping steeply away before their feet into a switchbacking path that meanders down the side of what could be called a mountain without much exaggeration; but it’s not the height that has stolen Waver’s breath and attention at once. There is a city laid out before them, vast even seen from the heights at which they’re standing, spreading to fill the whole length and breadth of the huge basin before them with buildings that rise one next to the other as if fighting to reach higher into the sky. Waver can’t make sense of the size of it, can’t guess at how many people might live in a space as enormous as that before him; even at a distance enough to shrink the roads to narrow lines as if on a map, the sheer size of the city is enough to catch his breath tight on shock and disbelief. It’s his journey from farm to city all over again but ten times the span; Waver thinks the palace they left behind them could be lost in the sprawl of buildings before him and hardly be seen amidst the mass.

“Ah,” Iskandar sighs from his side, breathing over the exhale with all the satisfaction of a man returning to a beloved home and a doting family. “At last.”

“What…” Waver presses his lips together and swallows, fighting for clarity in his throat enough to fit words to his lips. “What _is_ it?”

“My city.” Waver is glad for the hand still pressing to his shoulder and the arm bracing against his back; he isn’t sure he’d be able to keep to his feet, otherwise. Iskandar reaches out before them to point; Waver’s gaze follows the gesture into the glittering array of buildings before them to fix on the largest among them, ringed in the spreading green of gardens and trees like an oasis in the middle of all that humanity before rising to broad towers and soaring heights. Waver’s throat tightens, his eyes burn; Iskandar’s arm tightens around him to pull him closer and hold him steady. “This is home, princeling.” Iskandar’s arm pulls, and Waver’s feet move, and they crest the rise of the hill and continue down to the waiting city together.


	22. Welcome

Iskandar is welcomed as a hero.

Waver shouldn’t be surprised by this. The other man has hardly drawn breath since they met but to sing the praises of his home country and tell lengthy stories about people following him wherever he leads. But Waver has spent weeks immersing himself in the elegant mistruths of histories, and Iskandar exudes an impossible presence, and it has been easy for Waver to believe the stories exaggerations, at best, perhaps bearing the skeleton of truth underneath their shining seeming but impossible to credit as the reality Iskandar claims them to be. There’s been a part of him -- a small, bitter part, shrinking by the day but still present -- that has been almost looking forward to the unpleasant reality that may await them in this city that Iskandar has spoken so highly of, from these people whose loyalty is so unquestioned. Waver has been pushed out of the palace he never asked to be in in the first place by a half-brother who hates him enough to seek his life at the edge of a sword; whatever tendency he had towards believing in the good nature of humanity is vanishingly frail, now. There can be no city as beautiful as the one Iskandar describes, there can be no country so devoted to its king that his absence doesn’t leave a vacuum; they are more likely to be greeted with civil war than with the glowing welcome Iskandar expects.

It’s almost frustrating, to see how entirely correct the other man was. It begins before they’ve even reached the palace gates; no sooner are they past the boundaries of the sprawling city than people begin to seek them out, murmuring their suspicions behind lifted hands or shouting it directly, in cries of “King Iskandar!” that gain force and enthusiasm with every beaming smile and wave Iskandar gives in answer. By the time they’re halfway through the city they can hardly move for the crush of humanity around them, as what seems every person in the expansive buildings spills forth to reach or shout or wave to Iskandar; and Iskandar takes it all with the comfortable grace of a man born to rule, smiling and laughing and accepting all the acclaim as his deserved tribute, as if this excitement is no less than he expects. Waver thinks he would be swept away by the tide of humanity, just from the push of hands reaching to skim so much as a fingertip against Iskandar’s clothes; even his hold on the other’s cloak is insufficient, leaving him trailing like a flag in a high wind until Iskandar takes notice of his plight and reaches to draw him in closer with a laugh and some reassurance that is utterly lost in the chaos around them. A few weeks hence Waver would have balked at being caught in the span of Iskandar’s arm and pressed in against the other’s side like a prize, as if the spoils of some battle; right now, with the city churning itself to a froth of enthusiasm around them, he’s too glad to duck his head and tip himself in against the wall of Iskandar’s existence as he lets the other steer them forward through the mass of humanity filling the streets like a tide.

Waver doesn’t know how long it takes them. Even from the vantage of the hill overlooking the city the distance was considerable, long enough to merit an hour of walking even in a straight line at the ground-eating pace Iskandar’s strides guide them to; with the crawling speed they are reduced to by the enthusiasm of Iskandar’s people at seeing him, the journey seems to last forever. Waver can’t see past the crowd, can’t catch a glimpse at the walls of the palace that must yet be waiting ahead of them; after a few minutes of futile attempts he gives up outright and resigns himself to waiting out the storm in the shelter granted him by the enormous arm wrapping around his shoulders. It’s hardly a fit presentation for a prince coming to plead for assistance from a foreign country, hardly the entrance Waver had imagined himself making, but in the moment, with his head ringing with sound and light and the overwhelming crush of people when he’s seen no one but the man at his side for days, he thinks he’s doing well just to stay on his feet and shuffle forward as fast as he may.

He doesn’t hear the shouts of the palace guards at first. They are loud enough, deep and bellowing to carry through the commotion of the near-riot Iskandar’s arrival has caused, but Waver’s letting the sound around them rush over him like waves across a far-distant ocean surface, and it’s some time before he parses the shouts as the commands they are. It’s only when the press begins to fade that he realizes something has changed, and by the time he’s looking up to see the crowd parting before them the guards are striding forward from gates as expansive and sun-bright blinding as the city itself was from the overlooking hill. There’s a rush of relief in Waver, a breath of gratitude just for the break in the crowd around them; and then, hard on its heels, a surge of panic at the weight of the weapons in the men’s hands, at the unflinching pace of their forward stride towards them. Iskandar has been hailed as the king he claimed himself by the common people of the city, to be sure, but Waver knows too well the gap between palace and country, and the beliefs of the general population are no guarantee against the decisions of the castle. It would be a simple thing for those bright lances to come down and run either of them through, to bring a sudden, violent end to all the effort that has brought them here; and then the guards move as a single entity, dropping as suddenly as if they’re taken a blow to take a knee and bow their heads low before Iskandar standing before them.

“Your Majesty,” one of them says, in a voice so freighted with emotion that Waver can hear the quaver over the words. “Welcome back.”

“We are grateful for your safe return,” the other says, his words fractionally calmer than the first’s but still warm with more sincerity than Waver ever expected to hear from formal guardsmen.

Iskandar shows no surprise at all at the intensity of this greeting. He rumbles over a laugh instead, warm and pleased down in the depths of his chest, and when he reaches out it’s to press a hand to one of the guards’ shoulder. “It is well to be home.” The guard looks up, his eyes bright with the beginnings of tears before Iskandar touches against the bowed head of the second in turn. “I look forward to seeing everyone once again and to a proper banquet later this evening, but for the present my companion and I have been travelling long, and I believe the celebration will be far more pleasant if we carry less of the evidence of our travels upon our bodies for it.” The second guard coughs a laugh in time with Iskandar’s grin; even the overwrought one musters a shaky smile for his king beaming down at him.

Iskandar shifts his hold on Waver’s shoulders to press a hand to the other’s back and urge him forward. The force is gentle, comparatively, but Waver still stumbles with the motion as he comes forward and into the attention of the two guards still kneeling before Iskandar. They both look at him, their expressions utterly absent of any kind of judgment, but Waver can still feel his face heat to red under their attention as he straightens his shoulders and steadies his footing a little too late for convincing decorum.

“This is my companion,” Iskandar says, speaking as if this title is the most important of any that Waver might carry in himself. In the shining expanse of this city, and before the gazes of these men, Waver thinks perhaps it may be. “His name is Waver Velvet. See him taken to quarters fit for a guest of the palace and granted whatever he may require to prepare himself for the banquet tonight.”

“Of course,” both guards say together before rising to their feet with only slightly less matched grace. The first comes forward to duck into a shallow bow to Waver; the second steps in to murmur something to Iskandar. Over the barrier of the other guard’s shoulders and the ringing of the sound of the city in his ears Waver can’t pick out the details of the words at the man’s lips, but Iskandar’s laugh is bright and booming enough to pull all eyes to him at once.

“Not at all,” Iskandar says. “I declared him my vassal and therefore under my protection.” His hand slides along Waver’s back to tighten against the line of his shoulder; Waver can feel his whole face glowing scarlet with the familiarity of that contact granted sudden significance under the considering gazes of the guards before him. “He is to be treated as my personal guest, with as much care as you would show to me.”

The guards stand to attention and murmur a “Yes, Your Majesty” with the matched reverence that makes them seem all but identical, in spite of their disparate heights and appearances. The one before Waver turns to bow to him again, with somewhat more depth now than he did initially, and Iskandar lets his hand fall from Waver’s shoulder as he steps away. Waver can’t help but look to watch Iskandar’s departure, feeling his heart skip on irrational adrenaline as his constant companion of the last weeks strides away; but the guard before him is asking him to step forward, murmuring an invitation to enter the palace grounds with the tone Waver understands as carrying the force of a command for all its politeness, and Waver doesn’t have many other options available to him. He watches Iskandar for another moment, feeling his heart flutter on the beginnings of an anxiety he hasn’t felt since he left his own country; and then he sets his jaw to hide if not halt the tremor at his mouth, and he turns to follow his guide through the palace gates and into the brilliant glory of a home expansive enough for even Iskandar to fit.


	23. Celebratory

Iskandar’s orders are followed to the letter. Waver can’t help but feel out-of-place as soon as he is led around a corner and out of sight of the man who has been at his side for the last weeks; the skeptical part of him keeps expecting to be led to some damp dungeon and chained up as the political hostage his cynicism insists he is. But he’s led up instead, left to follow the shoulders of the guard who leads him through the winding halls of the palace without so much as the sideways glance Waver received regularly in the castle where he truly held some kind of status. Finally the man pulls open a door and gestures Waver inside with another polite bow that even Waver can’t pick any mockery from. Waver takes the invitation, nodding his appreciation before stepping into the quarters thus indicated, and he promptly forgets all considerations of politics and power in sheer awe for the first several seconds.

The space around him is as expansive as the rest of the palace. Waver thinks the whole of his quarters back in his home country could fit into the span of the bedroom alone, and there’s the splash of water from around the corner to stand as proof of a connected bath. The sheets across the bed are whisper-soft, when Waver presses a hand to them, the mattress stuffed to sinking softness under the weight of his touch, and the room itself is decorated with a wide variety of unfamiliar plants spreading their leaves to wave gently through the air from their settings in brightly glazed pots. Waver wanders through the room, lost in his own appreciation for long moments, until it’s only the sound of a polite cough from the doorway behind him that pulls his attention back to the waiting guard.

“These are the best quarters we have available aside from those of the king himself,” the guard informs him. “I hope they are to your liking.”

“Oh,” Waver says, aware that his awe is showing on his voice but too off-guard in the present surroundings to pull it back to calm. He presses his lips together and nods instead. “Yes, these will serve well enough for me.”

“Very well,” the guard says. “There is a bath around the corner awaiting you. I will ask one of the servants to come up with a change of clothes and to help you dress. Is there anything else you require?” Waver shakes his head, still not confident in the smooth of his voice, and the guard ducks into another bow. “Welcome to the kingdom. We are glad to have you here.” And he backs out of the room, easing the door shut behind him to leave Waver standing adrift in the middle of the enormous space around him. Waver watches the door for a moment, feeling a little bit dizzy, like he’s fighting to regain his footing in a world that has suddenly tilted itself sideways; and then he turns away from the main space of the bedroom and retreats around the corner to investigate the rest.

There is indeed a bath, and a large one, the biggest Waver’s ever seen. It’s set into the floor and nearly wide enough to swim in; when Waver sheds his travel-filthy clothes and steps in along the tiled stairs he finds it’s deep, too, deep enough to splash at his hips even while he’s standing straight up. The water is hot; it steals his breath when he first submerges himself, tightening his chest with a shudder of something almost panic before he lets the air spill from his lungs to bubble to the surface before following to emerge gasping and blinking water from his eyes. There’s a pleasure just to being in the support of the water, to lingering in the rising steam of the bath when Waver has spent the last weeks choosing between freezing in an icemelt river or going without; it takes him a long span of time before he can even think enough to find the heavy bar of scented soap waiting for him at the edge of the tile. It smells strange, sweet and spicy at once; Waver breathes in the steam of it for long moments, just appreciating the unfamiliar weight before he takes on the effort of washing days of sweat and road-dust from his body. His hair he washes twice, working in against the strands until his scalp is tingling and his fingernails are scrubbed as clean as the locks; it’s only after his whole body is glowing with combined heat and cleanliness that he finally emerges from the bath to lay claim to one of the towels folded at the edge of the tile. Those are as soft as the bedsheets, and thick enough they seem to drink the water from his skin; by the time Waver is padding out to the main space of the bedroom wrapped up in one of them his hair is hardly damp, and his skin is as dry as it was when he came in.

There is a servant waiting as promised, a young man hardly a few years older than Waver and a little shorter in height; but he carries himself with the presence of experience, whether feigned or sincere, and Waver finds himself brushed and turned and dressed while taking hardly any action on his own. The clothes he’s given are sumptuous things, soaked with brilliant dyes to dress Waver in a red nearly as vivid as the shade of Iskandar’s hair, and Waver is glad for the servant’s help just in getting the unfamiliar cut of the robe-like clothing over his head and belted around his waist. His hair is brushed out to a smooth fall across the back of his neck and dragging at his shoulders; the servant fusses with a hairtie for a few minutes, but after the shorter locks framing Waver’s face have escaped for the third time he gives it up outright and contents himself with smoothing the strands until they hang with rigid precision around the pale of Waver’s face. There’s the addition of sandals, strangely light and sitting uncomfortably on Waver’s feet rather than the familiar weight of his well-broken-in boots, and some kind of scented oil against the line of his shoulders and the dip of his throat so he’s left smelling as spicy-warm as the bar of soap he washed with. Finally the servant steps back to lead Waver to the door, dressed in finer clothes than he’s worn in the whole of his life and as polished as if he’s about to be offered as a gift to a king, and feeling less himself than he has since the first day his royal parentage was made public knowledge before a full court of waiting eyes.

The hallways are busy. There are servants in the corners, working or walking or lingering in conversations, but there are soldiers too, or men who pass for such, coming in and out of arched hallways or pacing through courtyards filled with trees showing off bare branches in anticipation of the arriving winter. Waver sees people everywhere around him, most moving, all occupied with their own business, until their gazes barely skim over him before moving on to some new point of interest. It’s different than the deliberate shunning he received back in his home country; this is casual, the idle distraction of men and women with more interest in their own work than in gaping at a foreign visitor, even one as carefully dressed as Waver himself. There’s something reassuring about it, in a strange way, to feeling so much like just another person in the crowd, as if he might be overlooked in spite of his elevated status, as if he might be able to lose himself outright amidst the bustle of his surroundings; at least it’s a comfort to give up his self-consciousness, to knowing that the people around him see no reason to stare or sneer at him, that he’s free to exist without the weight or benefit of his heritage on his shoulders.

The servant leads Waver all the way through the palace. They don’t backtrack over the route Waver took with the guidance of the soldier; they take another path, winding their way deeper into the collection of rooms and open courtyards that mark out the interior of the palace. Waver’s feet have started to ache against the unfamiliar texture of the sandals by the time they draw up before a pair of enormous doors, solid enough to hold back the sound inside to a dull rumble of noise; he has to resist the urge to stand on one foot and rub against his ankle in the moment he has while the servant is struggling to draw the door wide. He shifts his weight instead, adjusting against the clasp of the sandal strap around his foot; and then the door comes open, and a roar of sound spills out into the hallway, and the ache in Waver’s feet is entirely forgotten in the first shock of noise.

The hall is full. It takes Waver a moment to take in the size of the banquet space, just because of how many people are within; for the span of a breath it seems to be a solid wall of humanity, all laughing and eating and talking with abandon. There’s no space for Waver at all, he’s sure, there can be no room for even one more person in the mass of a crowd before him; and then there’s a roar of noise, a shout loud enough to echo even over the sound of hundreds of voices at once, and the room shifts as if the tide rolling in over a beach to turn towards the source of that voice, familiar even at that enormous, overwhelming volume.

“Waver!” Iskandar is on his feet at one end of the room; not on a throne, as Waver expected, but standing in the cluster of guests, wandering through the crowd with the same indiscriminate pleasure he showed with the visitors in the city streets. That hardly means he blends in: his height would do for that, if his shoulders didn’t, and Waver’s not the only one who has changed his clothes. Iskandar is dressed in the same scarlet, a sweep of crimson draping the whole expanse of his body, and over his shoulders he bears a cloak lined with fur dense enough to protect from far greater cold than what is present in the human-dense humidity of their present setting. He has a goblet in one hand, lifted high above the ground as if a sign of his right to rule; he keeps it raised, grinning hugely as he strides through a crowd that parts before him as easily as the water it seemed.

“Our most honored visitor!” Iskandar seems larger in person than Waver remembered, as if he gained in size by being returned to his home country, or as if the regal weight of his clothes has expanded his presence to fill even more space than he already occupied. Waver almost flinches back at the other’s approach, some instinct in him wishing for retreat from the cascade of attention that is following the force of Iskandar’s voice, but then an arm is coming down around his shoulders, he’s being pulled in sideways, and he’s pressing close against the whole line of Iskandar’s chest, held there by the force of the arm weighting around his shoulders. “I am glad to see you again, princeling!” Iskandar lifts his head to look out to the rest of the room; Waver’s attention lifts to follow the shine of the other’s smile, as enraptured by the radiant expression on Iskandar’s face as everyone else around him.

“Waver was betrayed by those who should have been closest to him,” Iskandar announces, still holding his goblet high as if he needs it to focus the gazes turned up towards him, as if he doesn’t catch and hold every eye just by virtue of the raw immediacy of his existence. “His own brother turned on him, the guards who should have been tasked with protecting him sought to take his life.”

“But he survived.” Iskandar looks down; for a moment the full force of his incandescent smile is turned on Waver, a spotlight of illumination enough to steal the other’s breath right from his lips. Iskandar looks back out to the crowd, turning to those expectant faces with no indication of self-consciousness at being the focus of so many bright gazes. “We broke free from the underhanded betrayal of his brother the crown prince, and now the time has come for repayment.” He gestures high with his goblet; hundreds of cups raise throughout the hall, taking their cue from the heft of Iskandar’s motion as he holds his own drink over them. “We will ride to the land held by this traitorous brother, and we will claim it in the name of a better ruler!” A cheer goes up through the hall; a few cups are pressed to the lips of those most enthusiastic of celebrants, but most stay up, tracking the lift of Iskandar’s glass as if flowers clinging to the shine of the sun in the sky. “We will expand the boundaries of our own empire and take back the land that has been held by such an untrustworthy prince.” Iskandar’s goblet swings wide, Iskandar’s arm lifts high over Waver head. “We will ride to conquest and to glory!” And he brings his goblet to his mouth, throwing his head back to swallow a long mouthful of the liquid within as the room resounds with a cheer from hundreds of throats all at once. The sound is oppressive, a burden enough to curve Waver’s shoulders in to flinch away from the near-physical presence of it, but it doesn’t diminish; it goes on and on, cheers feeding on themselves as if to fill the whole arched space of the hall around them with sound enough to echo for years to come.

The arm around Waver’s shoulders loosens enough that for a moment Waver thinks Iskandar is letting him go, is going to abandon him to the chaos swirling to a whirlpool around them, but when he turns to look up and to clutch in helpless panic at the other’s robe Iskandar is looking back down to him, giving the full attention of his gaze to Waver while the rest of the room dissolves into laughter and shouts and impromptu rounds of cheering.

“Come, princeling,” he says, softly enough that the words will be lost to anyone else but with his voice rumbling to weight against the whole of Waver’s spine. “Let us find you a cup of your own to toast to your impending victory.”

“We haven’t even left the country,” Waver protests, although it’s a weak attempt and he can feel it falling slack in his throat even as he offers it. “How can you be so sure you’re going to win?”

Iskandar’s laugh is warm enough to glow Waver’s cheeks to a flush, even with the distraction of the sound around them. “You have it turned around, princeling,” he says. “I win because I’m sure in the first place.” He presses at Waver’s back, his hand gentle but unflinching, and Waver ducks his head into surrender and lets Iskandar lead him away.

He already knows who’s going to take this battle anyway.


	24. Prepare

The preparations begin all at once. Waver expected there to be at least a few days of delay before anything began; the banquet alone would merit a slow start, as far as he is concerned. He lingered at the celebration far into the night, held in the overwhelming roar of humanity and enthusiasm around him by the weight of the hand that stayed at his shoulder for what felt like hours enough to spill them into the beginning of a new day; it was only when the effect of the rich wine and richer food conspired to drag his eyes shut and tip him in against the support of Iskandar next to him that Waver had finally been excused to return to his own quarters and fall into sleep deep enough to make up for weeks of uncomfortable travel. The sun is well up by the time he stirs to consciousness, brought awake more by the effect of unfamiliar silence around him than anything else. There’s no indication of impatience in the servant who arrives to offer him slightly less glamorous clothing than the regal robes he wore to the banquet the night before, but the peace in which Waver lingers over a breakfast in his quarters and a gentle waking is an illusion that gives way as soon as he steps out into the hallway. The walls are thick and the door must be heavier than its well-balanced hinges allowed him to notice, because while he was drowsing and splashing through another indulgent bath there was an entire army on the move through the corridor outside.

It’s not just soldiers. There are still servants, too, men and women in what Waver can recognize as palace livery even if he doesn’t know the color or cut of the foreign garb they are wearing, and soldiers bring their own followers, footmen and pages and squires alike darting in their wake up and down the hallways, hundreds of people moving in a dozen different pursuits that wind through each other like the threads of some grand tapestry. Waver pauses on the far side of his doorway, startled into stillness by the sudden force of the crowd before him; he’s still staring when the man who followed him out pauses at his elbow to clear his throat into a politely delicate interruption.

“My lord,” he says, speaking with all the respect that Waver has ever seen offered to any one of the nobles he passed in his father’s palace and never experienced himself. “Where would you like to go this morning?”

Waver turns his stare from the flood of people before him to the man at his side instead. It seems more manageable to speak to just one person instead of confronting dozens at once, but the man’s question is almost impossible to parse amidst the whirl of his thoughts. Waver has to blink hard to return himself to the moment, and gape soundlessly for another heartbeat while he tries to form his thoughts to some kind of clarity, until finally the distraction surging through the hallway and his own confusion get the better of any attempt at decorum and he huffs a breath and lets his shoulders sag under the weight of the clothes in which he’s been dressed.

“I have no idea,” he admits. “This--I’ve never been in a palace as grand as this one.”

The man ducks his head into a bow. “You do us honor,” he says, as evenly as if Waver has just offered a coherent compliment instead of admitting to his own dizzy confusion. “The capital city is the crown jewel of His Majesty’s empire and the palace is where he spends the most of his time. We strive to make it a home worthy of his presence.”

Waver huffs a weak laugh. “You’ve done well enough there,” he admits. “Where is Iskan--His Majesty?” It feels strange to give such a formal title to a man who has been a protector and a companion to Waver for months, now, but Waver still flinches for the unthinking slip of speech that started the other’s given name at his lips. “It would be good to see him.”

The man nods: in acknowledgment, more than submission, as his words make clear a moment later. “I apologize, my lord, but I’m afraid His Majesty is occupied this morning. He will be out with his men, preparing for the upcoming march. I expect he will take the midday meal with them as well, though he may return by the evening. Would you like me to send word to see if he might spare some time to meet with you?”

Waver blinks, caught off-guard in spite of himself by this reminder of Iskandar’s position sharper even than the strange mouthful of the title the other merits, now. He shakes his head hard, rejecting the servant’s polite offer with force even as he takes a half-step back to retreat physically from the idea. “No.” He can see it clearly in his head: Iskandar on the training grounds, as Waver used to see him, but surrounded now by the same devoted gazes that filled the banquet hall the night before, followed by a crowd of those soldiers who have taken up his path as their own, who have been the subject of so much of the other man’s affectionate reminiscing. While they were traveling it had been a story, distant enough for Waver to smile as if hearing a myth or an invention from the mind of some author or too-invested historian; but now, with the memory of the night before so clear in his mind, the words carry the force of reality, as if he’s standing himself at the edge of the grounds without having to travel at all. He can see it clear as truth, Iskandar’s broad smile and booming laugh, all the too-much of the other’s presence granted the shape of command, creating the outline of an existence suited for the battlefield, suited to lead. Waver would be no more than another pair of eyes in that crowd, just another follower with even less tribute to offer in his own abilities than those around him; and for a moment he can see himself as Iskandar must have seen him, as the child too defensive about his own abilities to even see how distant he truly was from anything of substance. Waver’s throat works, his cheeks burn; he has to press his lips tight together to fight back the whimper at his tongue, and when he shuts his eyes it’s to hold back tears as much as to block out the force of the crowd surging around him as he shakes his head.

“No,” he says again, with more force to the word this time than what he could manage before. He takes a breath and lets it out again, careful to strip any giveaway sound from the rhythm of it before he opens his eyes and turns his head aside to duck away from the steady gaze of the man before him. “Of course he’s busy with preparations. I’ll just find a place to keep myself out of the way.”

The man standing before him clears his throat with politic care. “I am given to understand that my lord practices the magical arts,” he says, delicate enough in his phrasing to ease even the most hair-trigger insecurity. “Might you be interested in visiting the library? It is an object of acclaim for size alone, and perhaps it might offer particular interest to one such as yourself.”

Waver lets a breath go, feeling it surge to relief as fast as he eases it. “Yes,” he says. “Iskandar -- the king spoke of the library, before. He claimed it was grander than any other in all the countries he has visited.”

The servant ducks his head. “You are welcome to judge for yourself,” he says. “Would my lord care for me to show him the way?”

It’s a perfect opportunity. Waver’s thoughts are already wandering to the possibilities of texts that may be held within these walls, already wondering if Iskandar’s proven honesty about the dedication of his people and the strength of his army might not apply to his collection of knowledge as well. If even a part of the other’s exaggerations prove true, he could lose days to study and hardly begin to touch any part of what’s available here. But for a moment his eyes catch at the shoulders of a pair of soldiers walking past, moving with the easy grace of men accustomed to the strength and abilities of their bodies, turning towards each other to laugh at some shared joke or glow of anticipation for what is to come, and for a breath Waver wonders what that armor would feel like on his own shoulders, what it would be like to carry that casual strength in the line of his arms and the flex of his legs. What it might be like to stand at Iskandar’s side on a battlefield, instead of in the shadow of his shoulders; what it would be to claim glory for his role in Iskandar’s own, to have a place granted to him by the uniform he bears rather than the shape of an ill-fitting title. Waver watches, and sees, and wants; and then he turns his head away, and he turns himself to what he can manage.

“Yes,” he says, with some measure of his old-practiced clarity in his throat. “Can you show me the archery grounds as well?”

The servant ducks his head, obedient without any indication of curiosity. “Certainly,” he says, and lifts a hand to gesture down the hallway. “We are nearer to the grounds than the library. I can lead you to the former before returning back to the main part of the palace, if you would like. I can also have some training garb laid out for you in your quarters, if you would like to make use of the grounds yourself later.”

Waver nods. “Yes, thank you.” The servant bows understanding and turns to lead the way down the hallway before them, and Waver steps forward to join the man in the wave of humanity making their way through the halls.

He might not be one of the soldiers filling the hallways, but that’s not going to stop him from making what preparations of his own he can.


	25. Launch

Waver goes with the army when they leave the city.

This is something of a relief. He spent the intervening days in the library, for the most part, or out at the archery grounds to practice drawing the weight of the bow Iskandar handed him all those weeks ago, but without any direct statement to the effect he hadn’t been sure he wouldn’t be left behind when the dedicated soldiers marched out to take the first steps onto the road that leads inevitably to his own home country. But Iskandar had beamed at him at the banquet the night before their departure, a fixed point in a room full of men cheering their presumed victory and their certain honor, and when he had pulled Waver in against his side and asked if he was ready for the morning the relief that hit Waver had been so keen he had had to duck his head to hide the surge of damp heat that started at his eyes in answer.

He doesn’t have many preparations to make. The soldiers have been collecting for days, milling through the halls of the palace and filling the training grounds with the whip of arrows and the clatter of practice swords while they await the return of some of the more distant troops still making their way back from their latest march, but when Waver asks one of the servants for assistance in obtaining appropriate attire he’s met with a ducked head and a polite bow and the reassurance that preparations have already been made on his behalf. It must be at Iskandar’s word -- Waver certainly wasn’t confident enough in his position to make any such request -- but in either case he wakes the next morning with the first light of dawn to a set of clothes less fine but more sturdy than what he has been wearing around the palace and a set of saddlebags full of supplies enough to carry him all the way to his home country and back again in comfort. Waver flips through the contents, just to familiarize himself with the pockets sewn into the inside of the bags and the knots of the straps that hold his bedroll close against the rest; and then he leaves the bags where they lie, and goes to change into the dark grey of the clothes left for him. They fit him well, from the breeches to the shirt to the forest-green cloak with a hood deep enough to pull fully over his head; Waver is expecting to have to drag them into comfort, but everything fits as if made for him, as perhaps it truly was. He tugs on his boots -- his old ones, more worn than the rest of his clothes but beaten in to comfort by the last weeks of travel -- and then there’s nothing left to do but to collect his bags, and the curve of his unstrung bow, and step out into the hallways to follow the tide of soldiers out of the main palace and towards the stables.

The departure is chaotic. Waver is swept along with the rest of the men, as helpless in deciding his own motion as a leaf floating across the top of a rushing river; he ends up pinned in the midst of a crowd, unable to see Iskandar even as the other shouts out a speech that is clearly meant to be rousing. It is effective enough for the men around Waver, at least; for his part, Waver is too off-balance and cold with the early-morning waking to give voice to approval or protest either one. He follows the men to the stables, where a boy covered in freckles and wide-eyed at the array of soldiers around him helps him strap his saddlebags onto a placid brown horse somewhat smaller than those the armored soldiers are riding, and by the time the army is moving out of the palace gates and onto the main thoroughfare of the city Waver is among them, as settled as he suspects he will manage to be for the next weeks.

It’s slow going. The soldiers are well-trained and accustomed to marching or riding either one, Waver thinks, but it still takes effort to move such a quantity of men and supplies across any distance at all, and the size of the camp requires that they stop earlier even than Waver and Iskandar did when there was a necessity to hunt for a meal before the daylight faded outright. Waver rides with the men, caught in a bubble of silence amidst clusters of soldiers who have fought or at least trained together and who have no compunctions about carrying on loud, cheerful conversations punctuated with bursts of amusement, and his isolation continues once they arrive at a space large enough for the full group to camp. The men around him dismount at once, moving with speed to lead their horses aside or to unpack their belongs or to procure the supplies to make a meal; Waver is left sitting on his own horse, feeling increasingly out-of-place in the bustle around him, until a soldier comes up to reach for the bridle of his horse.

“I’ll take your mount, milord.” It’s strange to be called such by a man Waver guesses to be at least a decade his senior, but there’s no hesitation in the other’s words, and the grin he flashes at Waver is unmarked by any trace of the bitterness that seemed as much Waver’s birthright as his title. “We’ll get things taken care of. You’ll be set and settled within the hour, I expect.”

Waver comes back to himself from gazing at the whirl of humanity around them with some stirring of color at his cheeks. “Ah,” he says, and then, with an effort to collect himself to composure: “Right. Of course” before he moves to dismount so he can hand his horse off to the other man. He pauses with his feet on the ground, looking around for a moment to take stock of his surroundings; it’s only the other beginning to move away that brings him back to himself and jolts him forward to reach and clutch at the man’s sleeve.

“I’m sorry,” Waver blurts, aware that he’s giving up all pretense of formality but too adrift to think what else to do. “What am I meant to do?” He lifts a hand to gesture at the focused action all around him. “Can I help set anything up, or…?”

The man’s smile breaks into a brief laugh so glowingly warm that Waver hardly even feels the tremor of self-consciousness that hits him in answer. “Not at all,” he says. “We’re all used to handling things. Everyone’s got his own tasks and will be able to take care of you, don’t you worry yourself about a thing.”

This isn’t precisely what Waver was hoping to hear, but it’s not as if he can complain about being given an hour to amuse himself while everyone around him is in the middle of their work. He grimaces and ducks his head as he struggles into the closest thing to sincerity he can find. “Thank you very much.”

The man clears his throat sharply enough that Waver’s gaze comes back up to him, but the other is patting at the nose of Waver’s horse rather than watching his face. “You could take that bow of yours and head out to the edge of camp,” he suggests, still watching the horse rather than Waver. “Won’t be in anyone’s way out there, and you’re not likely to misplace a camp this big even if you go some ways out.”

“Oh.” Waver turns his head to look at the trees around them and gauge the distance out to the far edge of the mass of people, where the movement becomes calmer and less intently focused. “Yes, I suppose I won’t. That’s not a bad idea.”

“You’ll be able to tell when dinner’s ready by the smell of it,” the man says. “It’ll be worth eating, the way His Majesty looks after us.”

“Right,” Waver says. He lets the man’s sleeve go and looks back to his bags; it takes him a few moments to slide his bow and quiver free and fish out some of the bowstrings from his bags, but the man waits patiently, apparently entirely occupied in smoothing against the nose of Waver’s mount. Waver steps away from his horse as he gets the last of his supplies free, swinging the quiver up over his shoulder before he pauses and glances back to the man to speak with significantly more sincerity than what he had before. “Thank you.”

The man lifts his hand to wave. “Glad to be of service,” he says, and then he clucks to Waver’s horse and turns to lead the animal away to join the line where the other mounts are being tied.

Waver makes his way to the far edge of camp, careful as he goes to avoid interrupting any of the fluid rhythm of the army settling in around him. It’s easier to manage when he’s working against the general inward motion; by the time he’s found a clearing for himself he feels almost steady in his own limbs, except for the general ache that comes with riding after long weeks afoot. He sets his quiver at the ground so he can struggle through the process of stringing his bow -- still a challenge, if a more surmountable one than it once was -- and then pauses to catch his breath before he slings the quiver over his shoulder and draws an arrow free. He scuffs at the forest floor to steady his feet, lining himself up with a wide-trunked tree several dozen paces away before he lifts the bow before him and draws the arrow back towards his ear. The motion is familiar, if still carrying effort enough that Waver can feel it in the muscles of his shoulder and the line of his arm; it’s almost soothing, in a way, as he pulls the string back and lines himself up before he lets the arrow fly to thud solidly into the bark of the tree before him.

“Not bad.” The voice is a low rumble of sound, startling just for its presence when Waver had thought himself unobserved; but his shoulders are easing even as he twists to look, some part of his mind recognizing the rhythm of those words before he’s set eyes upon the speaker. Iskandar is standing at the edge of the clearing, his hands at his hips and his gaze fixed on the arrow Waver has just shot into the distant tree; he’s dressed far less formally than the night before, with the weight of solid armor hung over his chest and strapped to his thighs, but he looks as comfortable here as he did in his silken robes and heavy cloak. He looks to Waver as the other gazes up at him, his eyes fixing the other where he stands before a familiar smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. “You don’t look bad either, princeling.”

There are a thousand things that Waver could say, a dozen topics he’d like to broach. He could thank Iskandar: for his help, for his support, for his teaching. He could compliment the beauty of the other’s country, of the city and the palace and the library that surpassed Iskandar’s most dramatic praise and Waver’s most wild imaginings. He could come forward to clutch at the other’s sleeve, could give in to the ache of loneliness that has been in him since he saw the worship in those faces in the city, in the eyes of the men all around them, that make Iskandar a god instead of a man that Waver can reach, that is on a level Waver can dream of laying claim to. But his throat knots under the warmth of Iskandar’s gaze, and his fingers tighten with the rumble of Iskandar’s voice, and what he says instead is: “They didn’t give me armor with everyone else.”

Iskandar’s laugh hasn’t altered with the change in setting or in status; it’s the same enormous, booming thing Waver remembers echoing through the library in his own palace, remembers filling the open air of the training grounds in his own country. “Indeed not,” he says, and it’s he who steps forward over the distance between them, bridging the gap as if it doesn’t exist at all to press a hand to Waver’s shoulder. “No offense to you, princeling, but if you end up in hand-to-hand combat you will be dead before armor can do you any good at all.”

Waver grimaces and ducks his head forward in practical surrender to this statement even if he can’t let himself give voice to it. “Why did you bring me along at all then?” he asks. “I’m not going to be any good to you if I’m just another liability to be protected.”

Iskandar’s hand tightens to squeeze at his shoulder. “You’re here to see this through to the end,” he says, his voice as steady as his hold. “To face the shadows of your past and free yourself from them and from your brother’s hold on you.”

Waver hisses and turns to look up. “Kayneth doesn’t--” but Iskandar is still talking without pausing for his interruption to take root.

“We will take this conquest in your name,” he says. “In the name of Waver Velvet. It will be your victory as much as anyone else’s.” He holds Waver’s gaze for a long moment, not flinching even as Waver’s face heats with the beginning of self-consciousness, until finally he turns his head to look out and gesture towards the tree. “And being at a distance is no limitation on your ability to do damage. You are a mage and an archer, are you not?”

“A mage, yes,” Waver admits. “I don’t think firing a few arrows is enough to make me an archer.”

“Hmm,” Iskandar hums. “Perhaps not.” He drops his hand from Waver’s shoulder and reaches for something at his side, tugging to loosen fastenings before he looks back and holds out the object. “What about this, then?”

Waver looks. Iskandar’s holding out a length of leather, worked and molded into a slight curve and with laces against the back; Waver’s seen enough of the soldiers wearing similar devices to recognize an arm guard, at least in shape. But this one is different than the plain leather wrappings the others wear: the weight of this one has been colored to a vivid green, nearly a match for the cloak hanging around his own shoulders, and there’s some kind of design laid into the edge where the straps connect. It looks as much an adornment as a piece of equipment, until it takes Waver a moment just to catch his breath back from the first surge of emotion that hits him at the obvious care that went into the making.

“I promised to outfit you upon our arrival,” Iskandar’s voice rumbles. Waver can’t look up to meet his eyes; he’s hardly holding back the damp at his lashes even as it is. “It took some time to prepare something fit for a prince.” Waver’s throat knots so sharply his breath hitches audibly over a choked-back sob but Iskandar doesn’t comment, just holds the guard out towards Waver.

“Give me your hand.” Waver does, lifting his hand as he ducks his head forward and lets Iskandar urge his sleeve up to his elbow before sliding the guard into place and tugging the lacings taut. It fits precisely against the whole inside line of his forearm, over the stripes of half-faded training bruises he’s collected over the last weeks of travelling and within the palace; Iskandar still goes over the lacings twice before he hums a low note of satisfaction.

“There,” he says, and lets Waver’s arm go, now bearing the weight of his new guard all against his forearm. “Let’s see you shoot with that now.” He returns his hand to Waver’s shoulder, pushing hard enough to steer the other into a turn; Waver obeys, glad for the excuse to turn his face away from Iskandar for the length of a single, shuddering breath while the other leans over him and frowns towards the tree.

“Do you see the gap between the bottomost branch and the main trunk?” Iskandar asks, tipping in closer as he lifts his arm to point. “Aim just below that, by the distance of a handspan.”

It’s a more precise shot than any Waver has made before but he doesn’t bother voicing a protest as to his capability, or his likelihood of failure. He just sets his jaw, and blinks hard to clear his eyes of the wet still clinging to his lashes, and reaches to draw an arrow free and lay it to the bow as part of the same movement he takes to pull the string back. Iskandar keeps his hand up, letting the line of his arm serve as guidance for Waver to sight along before he retreats, stepping back to stand just over Waver’s shoulder as the other lets the arrow slip free of his hold and cut its straight-line path through the air.

For once, Waver’s not even surprised when it lands solidly to quiver at exactly the point Iskandar indicated.


	26. Devotion

Waver has almost forgotten their goal by the time the fighting finds them.

It takes weeks to backtrack over the distance he and Iskandar traversed once on foot. The army moves slowly, burdened by the need to camp and the weight of their supplies, and there is little need to hurry. Their goal of the castle is hardly able to move itself, after all, and from the size of their army Waver is sure a surprise attack would be futile before it is even begun. Whatever preparations Kayneth and Waver’s father may make for their arrival will be made before they can arrive, and that means there is no need for haste; they can travel half the distance Waver and Iskandar did on foot, or linger into the mornings before camp is packed up and moving out again.

This isn’t to say that the soldiers are lazy. They make use of every daylight hour, to set up or take down the camp and to take turns holding practice matches against each other, cheered on by their fellows and sometimes by their king himself. Without any duties of his own Waver is free to spend his time watching the matches himself, or practicing his spells, or -- most often -- firing shot after shot into likely trees at the outskirts of camp. Sometimes he has an audience, one or two or five soldiers who cheer him on or shout good-natured advice that Waver can make little sense of; most often of all it’s Iskandar lingering behind him, arms crossed over the span of his chest and humming approval with every thud of an arrow into some target or another he sets for Waver’s goal. It’s those periods Waver likes best, when he can hold the whole of Iskandar’s attention for even a few minutes of the other’s precious time, and he thinks it’s that as much as anything else that keeps him practicing so long every day, until his arms are weak and his grip is shaky on even the minimal weight of his arrows. He rides with sore shoulders and protesting wrists, and practices until he can feel the strain in his back and neck like a single huge bruise; and he improves, day after day, a steady progress slow but too consistent to be mistaken.

It’s enough to fill his thoughts and hold his attention; and maybe he’s looking for something else to think about, too, rather than turning his focus to what is waiting at the end of their march. He knows the lands around the kingdom well enough, after all, even if he is utterly adrift in the miles of foreign soil where Iskandar led him; for the last week of their travel Waver knows where they are well enough to predict the day of their arrival nearly to the hour. But he doesn’t think of it, doesn’t turn his attention forward along the road or to anything more immediate than the next early rising or the anticipation of the comfort of his bedroll; and so when there is a stir that runs through the mass of humanity around him, it is long moments before Waver realizes what it must be. He stares out along the road, wide-eyed and confused by the clamor ahead, by the shouts working their way back to where he lingers near the back of the group; and then he understands, and his breath catches just as the soldier ahead of him shouts a question to the advance rows. “How many?”

“Many!” comes back the answer, clear and carrying and with none of the fear Waver is feeling prickle down his spine and knot in the pit of his stomach. “They have camped in the field before the city to force a fight there, on the open plains where they can see us coming.”

“Let them see,” the soldier alongside Waver, an older man with grey streaking his hair and a knarled scar laid along his jawline and across his neck, growls in response. “Perhaps the sight of us alone will be enough to break them.”

“Maybe they’re just waiting to offer the crown to us as tribute!” That starts up a laugh that rumbles through the whole of the mass of humanity around Waver; Waver can feel it wash over him like a wave before it fades out into the silence of anticipation. The men stir, shifting themselves through the first tremors of anxiety, and then settle into the tense waiting of experienced soldiers. Waver can see the calm readiness in them, in the steady weight of their eyes and the relaxed potential in their stance; but he can no more imitate them than he can grow wings and soar above them through the clear of the sky. His gaze keeps skipping forward, looking farther down the road as if he’s likely to see Kayneth himself striding through the army in a straight line to him; his shoulders won’t relax for the anticipation of an arrow striking them from some unseen attacker, from the expectation of violence like a storm hanging heavy in the air. He can’t breathe, can’t find air and can’t fill his lungs and his vision is going hazy, sticking at meaningless details -- a cloud in the sky, a falling leaf, a bird on a distant branch -- while Waver’s thoughts spin so fast he thinks he might tumble off his horse and be trampled in the forward charge that must inevitably come. He lets his reins go to clutch at the edge of his saddle, to hold onto the support while his vision swims and his mind flails; and then there’s a shout, “Move aside!” in a cheerful roar that Waver knows better than anything else in this unfamiliar reality, and he lifts his head to look up as Iskandar surges forward towards him through the army that parts for him as water for a ship. He’s grinning that broad, white smile that Waver has never known him to lack, and when he rides in alongside Waver the blow of his hand at the other’s back is as firm and warm as ever.

“Princeling!” His voice carries as thoroughly as if he’s addressing the men around them as much as Waver himself, but when Waver lifts his head to look up at the other Iskandar is beaming down at him, turning the full force of his smile on Waver before him as if he hasn’t even noticed the rest of the expansive army surrounding them. “You look paler than usual. Do you need to catch your breath?”

Waver shakes his head. “I’m fine,” he says, or starts to say; but the world chooses that moment to veer wildly under him, and his knocked-loose grip at the edge of his saddle leaves him tipping forward so sharply he’s in abrupt danger of actually falling. It’s only Iskandar’s hand closing at the back of his cloak to catch his weight that keeps him from falling outright to the hard-packed earth of the road underfoot.

“Not the word I would use,” Iskandar says, still sounding as warm and amused as ever. He presses his hand against Waver’s shoulders, weighting the other to some measure of steadiness in his saddle as Waver replaces his white-knuckled grip at the edge and tries to breathe through the light-headed panic gripping him. “Can you keep yourself upright for a few minutes?” Waver nods without looking up and Iskandar pats his back before letting go and reaching for his reins instead. “Hold on.” Iskandar leads them back through the press of the men around them, carrying Waver in the wake of his movement with no apparent self-consciousness, and Waver is at least grateful to his surging adrenaline for the disinterest it grants him in how he must look to the men around him as he’s led away to the edge of the army. He’ll be in an agony of embarrassment about it later, he’s sure; for now he’s happy just to topple out of his saddle as soon as Iskandar leads him to a halt so he can drop to his hands and knees on the ground and gasp for air enough to will the dizzy motion of the world around him to a halt.

Things are starting to stabilize, if only slightly, when there’s a pat at his shoulder, the motion gentle but the weight heavy enough to put Waver in some danger of outright collapse. “How goes it, princeling?” Iskandar asks. “If you’re going to be ill you may as well do it now.”

Waver shakes his head. “I don’t think there’s enough in my stomach for that,” he says. He lets his weight rock back over his heels, carefully, to test out the motion of his balance, before he lifts a hand from the stability of the ground to push through his hair. “I should have known I’d be useless before we’re even at the fighting.”

“It’s the waiting,” Iskandar says, sounding as calm as if nearly passing out before a fight is a perfectly ordinary thing for someone to do. “Battle is a great deal to bear but the waiting for it is a trial of its own. You’re hardly the first to be taken like this.”

“That doesn’t change the facts,” Waver says. “I’m no good as a mage. I have no experience wielding a bow at anything more mobile than a tree stump. Now I’m falling to pieces when the fighting hasn’t even begun.” He huffs a humorless laugh. “Some prince I am.”

There’s a pause. Waver’s head is clearing, whether from the effect of self-deprecation or just with time, he doesn’t know which and it hardly matters. The world is coming back into focus, at any rate, his dizzy nausea easing as cold resignation takes its place. There is a battle lying ahead of them, the truth of war waiting for Iskandar and Waver and all the men filling the length of the road; and then Iskandar clears his throat, and Waver is looking up in answer before the other even speaks.

“Princeling.” The title is familiar, the gentle teasing on the word something Waver gave over fighting weeks ago, when his efforts were demonstrated as futile; but there’s no teasing in Iskandar’s tone now, any more than there is a smile at his mouth. His voice is level, his gaze steady as he looks out at the army alongside them; Waver’s skin prickles with the weight of the moment, the importance he can feel forming itself around them even before Iskandar turns his head to meet his gaze fully. “Do you wish to remain behind?”

Waver’s heart drops, his stomach plummets with such speed it feels as if it’s abandoned his body entirely. “W-what?”

“Do you wish to remain?” Iskandar repeats. “You are not part of the army. You have not sworn the oath these men have.” He gestures to the rows of soldiers before them, all of them looking forward, expectant, almost hopeful for the battle to come. “This fight is for your land but that does not mean it must be at your hand.” There’s no judgment in his tone, no edge to his gaze; the offer is as sincere as everything Iskandar has ever said, warm and comforting with understanding. “It is my duty to protect you, as I am your bodyguard and you are my vassal.” His broad mouth pulls onto the flicker of a smile. “It would be far easier to do so with you distant from the fighting.”

Waver stares at Iskandar for a moment. It would be an easier question to answer, he thinks, if it were given with an edge, if it carried the implication of judgment all Kayneth’s words hold, all the weight of disdain Waver used to see in the eyes of the palace servants. But there is no judgment in Iskandar’s face, no dismissal in his tone; he just looks at Waver, seeing the whole of what the other is and is not, and the offer stands with as much sincerity as any he has ever made. For a moment Waver thinks of it: distant from the fighting, safe in the protection of the forest, far from the blood and death and violence. Then he shakes his head, pushing the thought away from him with the rough force of instinct.

“No,” he says. “No, I. I want to go.” Waver presses his lips together, struggling to breathe around the burn of emotion pressing at his throat as he meets Iskandar’s gaze. “I want to...I want to be with you.”

Iskandar doesn’t so much as blink. He just ducks his head into a nod, as calmly as if he expected this, as if he and Waver are going through some predetermined ceremony. Waver wonders if he does know, if those eyes see as clearly through him as they seem to or if it’s just Iskandar’s acceptance of the world that lets him so easily take this statement as fact as quickly as Waver gives it. “Very well then,” he says now. “Do you wish to become my retainer, Waver Velvet?”

Waver’s throat closes up entirely. For a moment all he can do is stare at Iskandar; the army is forgotten, the battle to come gone from his thoughts. There’s just the man before him, watching him with steady consideration behind the dark of his eyes, and the sound of his own heartbeat, and the warmth glowing in his chest, spreading out into his veins like sunlight rushing through him in place of blood until he thinks he must be glowing with it. His eyes burn, his throat works, but when he blinks there are no tears, and when he opens his mouth it’s a gasp of relief that breaks free instead of a sob.

“You,” Waver starts, and his voice is shaky but his words are sure, they are pressing themselves to his tongue like they have always been there, as if they are being drawn up out of him by the force of Iskandar’s gaze. He straightens his position, rocking back over his heels to make deliberation out of his accidental kneel in front of Iskandar’s waiting gaze. “You are my king,” he says, and the words are true, Waver thinks they may be the truest thing he’s ever said. He ducks his head forward into a bow, keeping his gaze cast down as he swallows and reaches for the right words. “I will serve you.” He takes a breath, feeling it shake in his chest, but the tremor on his voice is all emotion and no uncertainty, not when he can feel the resonance of his speech down in the very core of his being. “I will devote myself to you. Please lead me” as his throat tightens, as a sob threatens the last of his words: “Let me dream your dream.”

A hand touches at Waver’s hair, a palm weighting against the dark strands to cradle the top of his head. “I accept” and Waver shuts his eyes against the force of those words as they resonate through his bones like music humming through the air. Iskandar presses against his hair, punctuating his words with the affection of a touch; and then he draws his hand back and gets to his feet. Waver lifts his gaze to see Iskandar’s face; the other is smiling down at him and extending a hand to help him up.

“Come with me,” Iskandar says. Waver reaches up to take the hand offered and is promptly pulled to his feet bodily more than helped; Iskandar doesn’t let Waver’s hand go as he leads him back to where their horses are waiting. He unstraps Waver’s bow and quiver from where they are both tied over the other’s saddle to settle them atop his own; it’s only a few motions before they are as secure on his own mount as they were on Waver’s. “I will take you with me.” He swings into his saddle with practiced ease and settles himself far at the back of his seat before turning back to extend a hand again. “Come. I won’t let you fall, however dizzy you may get.”

Waver could protest. He thinks even a few minutes before he might have done so, lightheadedness or no. But he feels warm through his whole body, as if he’s filled with some part of the bright of Iskandar’s smile, and he can’t find any part of himself that wants to refuse. So he steps in instead, and reaches up to clasp his hand around Iskandar’s, and lets himself be pulled up and into the saddle in front of the other man. Iskandar draws him in close, fitting them together until Waver’s shoulders are pressing flush against the solid support of the other’s armor, and when he reaches out for the reins his arms form a wall around Waver before him nearly close enough to be an embrace.

“This is it, princeling.” Iskandar’s voice is close over the top of Waver’s head; Waver imagines he can feel the sound of the words rumbling in the span of the chest behind him. “Let us ride to our victory.” Iskandar knees his horse into movement, urging it on past the crowd of the waiting army so he can reclaim his position at the front of his men, and Waver braces one hand against the edge of the saddle, and one against Iskandar’s arm before him, and lets himself be carried forward into the waiting battle.

Whatever is waiting for them, Waver is right where he wants to be.


	27. Command

It’s chaos at the front of the battle.

Waver had expected that, of course. He could hear the sound of combat as far back as he was in the mass of the army, and the noise of shouts and metal and conflict only grow to a deafening roar as Iskandar guides them towards the front. It’s still louder than he expected, louder than he knew anything could get, until by the time they actually come into range of the battle itself Waver’s head is ringing and his hold on Iskandar’s arm is more for necessity than comfort. He can feel his heart racing in his chest, can feel every pulse of blood throbbing against the inside of his thoughts; it’s impossible to think, hardly possible even to see. Everything is noise and movement and sound, shouts and screams and the thunder of hundreds of feet and hooves together clattering against the ground beneath them like an earthquake, as if the world itself is protesting the blood spilled across it.

And there is more than enough blood. Waver thinks he would be sick if he had time to take it in, if he had space to feel anything but the suffocating pressure of true fear: everywhere he looks someone is bleeding, someone is dying, violence is playing itself out in the flicker of arrows and at the edges of swords, the rush and surge of combat breaking itself upon the shoals of bodies only to sweep forward once more into an endless tide of bloodshed. It’s less immediate than seeing the guards Iskandar cut down on their escape from these same walls, and in such quantity that Waver’s mind recoils from tallying up the count of the dead, but the mass of it is overwhelming, until Waver feels like he might be swept off his horse and down into the bloodstained mud just by the intensity of what’s going on around him. He would regret his decision to come here, if he had the space to recall anything other than this exact moment, this precise _now_ of existence that he feels like a gift and a curse at once; but Iskandar’s arms are still around him, and the horse beneath him is bearing them forward, and all Waver can do is hold to Iskandar’s wrist and stare wide-eyed at the horror of violence all around them.

“Remember this.” That’s Iskandar’s voice, near enough to his ear for Waver to hear even over the roar of chaos echoing around and over them. Iskandar’s arms shift as he tugs at the reins of the horse to lead them along the edge of the battle and towards the fringes, where the shouts of fighting fade towards the groans of the wounded and dying. “All the victories we claim are bought like this. The best have less but all have some. There are few who are happy to hand themselves over to even a benevolent ruler without fighting for their independence first.”

Waver shakes his head. “It’s awful,” he says. “Does it ever get easier to see?”

“No,” Iskandar says. “That’s the cost of holding onto your humanity.” His arms tighten on the reins to draw them into another sweeping turn as they crest the farthest edge of the battlefield and come around to look back to the destruction and violence behind them. “Fear the day you can view this with composure, princeling.”

Waver huffs a breath. “ _You_ seem calm enough.”

“I am thinking of the goal,” Iskandar says evenly. “That does not mean I do not feel the cost, only that I will tally the price when there is time for such.” He collects the reins in his hands; Waver can feel the tension of intent in the other’s body. “Shall we return to the field and support the men fighting in my name?”

Waver ducks his head, intending to nod his acceptance of this even as his stomach drops with horror at the thought of returning to the heat of the battle they rode past the first time; but before he can find voice for an answer there is a shout, far distant but herald-clear to carry along the whole of the line.

“Peace!” There’s motion amidst the chaos, a ripple of stillness as clear to see as action would be in calm; the sound fades, the clash of combat giving way to a silence so strange it feels breathless with tension even as it forms. Waver squints, blinking hard to try to bring the movement ahead of them into focus; it’s the flicker of a flag that finally catches his gaze, that draws his attention to the unarmored rider cresting the low hill before them as he rides through the midpoint of the battle. The fighting parts around him, splitting Iskandar’s forces and the palace’s as if cut with a knife; as he gallops closer the flag clarifies into brilliant white against the blue of the sky, whipping out straight behind the pole on which it is mounted as a pennant to draw all eyes. “Hold your weapons!”

“This is of interest,” Iskandar rumbles. “Perhaps your brother has proven more reasonable than he seemed.”

Waver frowns. “I don’t think--” he starts, but Iskandar is kneeing his horse into motion anyway, and Waver’s words are lost to the speed of their action. Waver grimaces and clutches harder at the edge of the saddle before him; voices are lost to their speed but he can feel Iskandar’s rumbling laugh before the other claims his reins to one hand so he can catch his other arm around Waver’s waist to hold him steady. It’s like an iron bar bracing Waver in place, locking him against Iskandar’s certain seat as if armor enough to match that worn by the battered soldiers falling back before the white flag, and it calms some fraction of the strain in his chest, at least enough that he can struggle through a breath even as Iskandar brings them forward and into the torn-up destruction of the main line of the battlefield.

“Hold!” Iskandar shouts, so loud that Waver cringes from the volume so near his ears. “Hold, in the name of the king!” He urges his horse forward, moving with such speed Waver thinks for a terrifying moment they will crash outright into the herald clinging to the flag sweeping over his head, but at what seems the last possible moment Iskandar guides them into a turn as graceful as if it were intended from the beginning. The herald’s mount shies backwards, dancing away from the impact narrowly avoided, but Iskandar’s mount doesn’t shift, just holds as steady as if its feet have become stone with the urging of the hold on its reins.

Iskandar shifts behind Waver, giving over his hold around the other’s waist to lift his hand in greeting instead. “Our weapons are held,” he says, speaking with a warm weight to his voice as if he’s having a pleasant conversation in a banquet hall instead of across the blood-stained dirt of a battlefield. “You have your audience. What it is you wish to request of us? Has your kingdom seen fit to bend knee to its true ruler?”

“Hardly.” The voice is sharp, cutting through the air as much by its tone as by what must be magically-aided volume; Waver feels it as if a command to his shoulders to tighten, to his body to seize on strain. His head comes up, his breath spills from him, and from the drawn-back line of the opposing army a horse steps free, bearing upon its back a rider so gilded with silver that his armor seems to glow as painfully bright as the blond of his hair in the midday sun. His features are as sharp as his voice, from the icy blue of his eyes to the hard line of his mouth; Waver can feel the cast of that gaze skimming across him like a blow, as if Kayneth had reached out over the distance between them to slap him open-palmed across the face. Kayneth’s focus slides over him as if he doesn’t recognize Waver, coming up instead to meet the eyes of Iskandar behind him as he rides forward from the defense of his men to come to a halt in the cleared space between the two armies.

“We have come to negotiate a conclusion to this pointless battle,” Kayneth says. Some of the effect of the spell on his voice has eased but he’s close enough, now, for his tone alone to carry the edge of a knife to Waver’s hearing. “Any king, even a barbarian, can hardly enjoy watching his men die in his name.”

“Certainly,” Iskandar rumbles. “A clean surrender is far better for all involved.”

Kayneth inclines his head. “To be sure,” he says. “Which is what we have come to offer. The conclusion of this battle, and ownership of the palace, to go to the victor in single combat.”

Iskandar hums a low note with far more consideration in it than Waver would like. “An intriguing offer. What would be the terms?”

“One combatant from each side,” Kayneth says. “Chosen at the ruler’s discretion and tasked with fighting for the right to the throne of this land.” He lifts his hand to gesture carelessly over his shoulder. “Surely you would like to claim the city with less of the ill-will that will follow from more spilled blood.”

“Don’t,” Waver says, grating the words past his teeth without looking away from Kayneth. “Don’t do it, Iskandar, he must be plotting something.”

Kayneth’s gaze flickers from Iskandar’s face to Waver’s and Waver’s voice dies on his lips like it’s been cut off. “Of course,” he drawls. “We can hardly expect anything but vitriol from a traitor to his own people. This is a matter for royalty, boy, not for faithless peasant scum.”

“ _Traitor_ ,” Waver repeats. “ _I’m_ the traitor? It was you who ordered the attack on my life!”

Kayneth scoffs and lifts his hand to smooth his hair back from his face. “Is that the story you’re laying claim to?” he asks. “After setting free a prisoner and claiming payment in the blood of the guards meant to protect you? You’re no better than the whore who birthed you, after all.”

“Shut _up_ ,” Waver shouts. “I never did _anything_ to you and you--”

A hand braces at his shoulder. “Peace,” Iskandar rumbles. “Peace, princeling, he isn’t worth your fire.”

“He’s _lying_ ,” Waver says, and is startled to find his cheeks wet, to find his eyes swimming with tears so frustrated he hadn’t even felt them spilling over his lashes. “What has he been saying all this time?”

“It’s to be expected,” Iskandar says, still speaking low for Waver’s hearing rather than the field’s. “It doesn’t matter, now. This is a greater battle we face.” He raises his voice, speaking clearly enough for it to carry across the span of the field without the need for aid of any magic at all. “On behalf of my men and in the name of my kingdom, I, King Iskandar, accept your challenge!” He rocks up into his stirrups; the motion tips Waver forward almost to sprawl against the horse’s neck. “As I hold the respect of my men, so shall I fight in their place to lay claim to your country and your kingdom!”

“Don’t,” Waver says again, speaking in a desperate whisper as Iskandar swings his leg over the saddle and moves to dismount. “Iskandar, _don’t_ , you can’t trust him!” But Iskandar is dismounting already, landing at the stained dirt of the battlefield, and across the strip of cleared earth Kayneth’s mouth is twisting on a satisfied smile.

“Spoken as a true warrior,” he says, his voice twisting the compliment into a poisonous barb. “Of course, as the true heir to the throne, we must consider our own safety foremost. Luckily we trust the least of our men to fight as fiercely as we might.” He tips his head and raises his voice. “Come forward, Diarmuid!”

“Iskandar,” Waver says again as the ranks of men behind Kayneth shift to allow Diarmuid to ride forward from their midst. “Wait, _wait_.” His feet don’t reach the stirrups; he grips hard at the edge of the saddle instead, clinging to it as a counterbalance as he strains to lay hand to the trailing edge of Iskandar’s cloak. His grip isn’t enough to force the other to turn, Waver knows -- all Iskandar has to do is go on walking and Waver will be forced to either let go or be pulled from the horse outright -- but Iskandar pauses at the tug, shifting to look back over his shoulder in answer to Waver’s desperate grip.

“You can’t trust him,” Waver says, hissing over the words with desperate terror more for Iskandar than for himself. “He ordered me assassinated, you know he did, he must have something planned. You can’t play into his hand!”

“I cannot let my men throw themselves into a battle I could end right here,” Iskandar answers, his voice deep and low and even in stark contrast to the frantic edge on Waver’s. “Even if we were to triumph that is no kind of a victory to be proud of.”

Waver’s fingers twist on Iskandar’s cloak, fisting to a hold as if to keep them together, whether to hold Iskandar back or keep himself with the other, he doesn’t know. “You’ll _die_.”

Iskandar’s shoulder comes up in a shrug. “That is the risk we take with every battle, princeling.”

Waver’s breath hiccups in his chest, his wrist flexing with helpless desperation. “Don’t leave me.”

The set lines of Iskandar’s expression soften, easing from calm certainty into something softer, gentle with warmth that Waver remembers from across the flickering light of a campfire, from the shadows of a banquet hall. He turns entirely, shifting to give Kayneth and Diarmuid the span of his back for a moment as he reaches up towards Waver leaning sideways out of the saddle. His palm catches at the back of Waver’s head, his fingers settle into the weight of Waver’s hair, and then he takes a step forward as his arm flexes to urge Waver forward, and when Waver throws out his free hand to catch himself at Iskandar’s shoulder Iskandar’s mouth comes against his own to soften the sound in his throat to muffled silence.

There’s nowhere for Waver to go. His balance is tilted far forward, only the grip he still has at Iskandar’s cloak and the hand braced at the other’s shoulder keeping him from falling outright into the other’s arms; with that steady hold at the back of his head and another catching at his waist he can’t pull away even if he could think to do so. And he doesn’t think of it: doesn’t think of pulling free, or of gasping shock, or of offering the least reciprocation in himself, because Iskandar is kissing him, gentle and certain and thorough, until all Waver can do is cling to the other’s shoulders as Iskandar lays claim to the rhythm of his breathing and the shape of his mouth and the give of his lips, soft on startled surrender to everything Iskandar could ask before he even makes the request. Iskandar takes him, all Waver thinks to offer and more, drawing surrender up and out of parts of Waver he didn’t know he had to give, until by the time the hand at his hair steadies and the mouth against his draws back and away it is a struggle for Waver to recall how to breathe, a fight just to lift the shadow of distraction from his eyes so he can see again.

“Watch.” Iskandar’s voice is low, rumbling in his chest until Waver quivers with the force of it down his spine. “Stay here and watch me, princeling.” He lets Waver’s hair go to touch at the other’s wrist and urge it up and free of his cloak; Waver lets himself be drawn free, too hazy with the friction at his mouth to realize he’s being urged back until he’s upright in the saddle again with Iskandar’s fingers bracing gently against his wrist. Iskandar tightens his hold as he looks up straight into Waver’s dizzy gaze; his eyes are dark, his mouth soft, and when he smiles there is no sign of anything but sincerity in the lines of his face. “I’m still your bodyguard, aren’t I?” He lets his hold at Waver’s wrist go and takes a step back from the side of the horse. “You can rely on me.” And he turns, and steps forward out onto the field where Diarmuid is waiting for him.

Waver would like to turn aside. He’d like to urge the horse under him around and in, would like to interrupt the match to come by force, if needed. At the least he’d like to duck his head and shut his eyes and block out his awareness of the combat until it’s over, just to spare himself the adrenaline of fear and hope that is so gripping him. But he tightens his hold at the edge of the saddle, and he straightens his spine, and he turns his head to look out at the field and watch as Iskandar draws his sword, as Diarmuid raises a pair of spears into the readiness of a combat stance.

Iskandar told him to watch, after all, and Waver can’t disobey an order from his king.


	28. Just

Iskandar is winning.

Even Waver can see it. He flinches with every blow and clatter of metal grating off itself as Diarmuid’s weapons hit and skid off Iskandar’s sword or armor, reflex overriding even his gritted-teeth determination to watch every moment of the fight that he can bear to see; but it’s far more often Diarmuid who shudders beneath the weight of one of Iskandar’s overwhelming blows, hunching under the barrier of a spear that bends as if it means to snap in two beneath the blunt force of the other man’s hits. Iskandar is moving forward far more than he’s falling back, stepping closer and holding every inch of ground he gains, until Waver can see Diarmuid’s defeat is a matter of time more than any kind of a question. It’s there in Diarmuid’s face, too, set into lines at the corners of his mouth and creasing his forehead on pressure; Waver can see how white he is under the sweat of effort, can see the giveaway for his failing strength without even straining for sight. He doesn’t think he could ever be comfortable watching Iskandar trading blows with a man set to take his life; but under the present circumstances, there can be no question as to the ultimate victor.

Iskandar can see it too. Waver can see the flash of the other man’s smile as he turns sideways, shifting his footing to a better angle as he lifts his sword with as much ease as if it’s a rapier instead of the double-handed broadsword it is in truth, as he catches the whip-quick blow of Diarmuid’s lance with the flat of the blade as if he’s trading hits in a practice ring. He looks easy, comfortable in his superiority and pleased to be facing a competent opponent; as they break away he lets his sword angle down and rocks his weight back into something better suited for conversation than a battlefield.

“Come,” he booms, the word meant for Diarmuid but loud enough to carry clearly to the ring of silent observers for this battle. “We both see how this must end. You have fought well on behalf of your prince and country today. Will you not bend knee and surrender to fight for me instead of against me?”

Diarmuid’s mouth sets, his lips tighten. When he shakes his head there’s something desperate under it, something of frantic anxiety in the motion. “I cannot.”

“You do honor to yourself with your dedication,” Iskandar tells him. “It would be a loss to both our countries if I were to have to kill you here.”

“No,” Diarmuid gasps. “The fight is not yet over.” He comes in quickly, covering the gap between himself and Iskandar in a pair of strides so long he looks in some danger of falling outright, but when his blade swings down Iskandar’s sword is there to catch the shine of the edge as if he saw where it would come from. He doesn’t look tense, is hardly even looking at the blade at all; his gaze is fixed on Diarmuid’s face, his expression drawn heavy on sincerity.

“It is,” Iskandar says, and swings his sword around to pin Diarmuid’s spear to the ground under its weight. He takes a half-step forward, crowding Diarmuid into falling back even though Iskandar’s weapon is presently occupied. “Will you make me kill you before you will see that?”

Diarmuid stares up at the other. He’s a tall man, lean with muscle but broad enough of shoulder to draw eyes to him everywhere he goes; Waver has seen more than a few of the court ladies gazes following Diarmuid more closely than even the icy handsomeness of the crown prince himself. But with Iskandar looming over him he looks like a youth, as if he’s as uncertain in his years as Waver too often feels. Diarmuid’s eyes are wide, his mouth is quivering; for a moment he looks so afraid Waver feels something like pity for him, even under the pressure of the circumstances. He opens his mouth, looking as if he intends to speak; at his side his hand on his second spear loosens, his grip easing enough to angle the point down and away from Iskandar before him.

There is a shout from the far side of the field, a growl of protest that rises into the shape of words as it lifts itself to audibility. “Don’t you _dare_ ” and Waver knows the pitch of that voice, can track the nasal hiss on the words even before he turns to see Kayneth’s royal rage glowing cold fire from behind the line of soldiers marking out the far side of the battlefield. “I did not choose you to surrender my throne to this _barbarian_.” Kayneth’s hand comes up, lifting high over his head before his fingers snap loudly enough for Waver to hear it as if they were against his ear. “You will _fight_ , damn you!”

Diarmuid’s fingers on the spear at his side tighten, his arm flexes. Waver opens his mouth to shout a warning but Iskandar is already stepping back, retrieving his weapon as he falls back a handful of steps at the same time Diarmuid wrenches his first spear back to his side to hold the pair up in front of him, crossed over his chest as if to make a makeshift wall of their shape. He stays still for a moment, his head ducked down so the dark wave of his hair is falling over his face and shadowing his features; and then he moves, at once, lunging forward in a desperate motion to close the distance between himself and Iskandar. Iskandar brings his sword up to catch the blow, a frown heavy across his face as he watches Diarmuid move, but Diarmuid hardly pauses in his action; he brings up his second spear at once, stabbing in low at an angle designed to slice under the bottom edge of Iskandar’s armor and pierce into the other’s body. Waver’s chest flexes, cramping on the force of the shout he wants to give, but his voice is too slow and Iskandar is moving already, dropping back by long strides as his frown deepens further to pull heavy shadows into the familiar shape of his expression.

“Hold,” Iskandar rumbles. “Hold, man!” But Diarmuid isn’t looking up, is giving no sign at all of having so much as heard Iskandar’s voice; he’s hardly even looking where he’s going. His movements are clumsy, jerky and strange even to Waver’s inexperienced eye; the grace of the last few minutes is gone, abandoned for an awkward, stumbling pace as if he means to fling himself bodily onto the blade of Iskandar’s sword and force a violent end to the confrontation. But his weapons are moving faster, too, swinging as if controlled by an outside hand, as if Diarmuid himself has become nothing more than a puppet to bring those glinting edges the closer to the man in front of him. Even his blows are less calculated; they’re fast, to be sure, they strike with the speed of snakes as he lunges forward towards Iskandar, but they are aimed at any available body part, as willing to claim a blow at the back of the other’s wrist as the possibility of a lethal strike at neck or belly. Iskandar parries the strikes without much difficulty -- his sword is slower but the sheer size of it is enough to serve as a shield in itself -- but he’s fallen back to the defensive, apparently contenting himself with staving off the blows while he frowns at his attacker.

“Something’s wrong,” Waver says; but the words are too soft at his lips, and no one is listening to him anyway. His lack of audience doesn’t undermine his certainty, though; he can feel the chill of it in his bones, can feel it forming to a knot of cold fear in his stomach as he watches Diarmuid’s desperate, suicidal attacks break against the barrier of Iskandar’s sword. Diarmuid’s head is down, his eyes are in shadow; he can’t possibly see what he’s doing, can’t be gauging the trajectory of the fight without his vision. And his actions: even as dedicated as Waver knows him to be, the blows he is aiming for are foolish ones, the kind that would have him run through by a more aggressive opponent in exchange for a cut that would be no more than a scratch on Iskandar’s arm or at the back of his hand. There’s no point to attacks like that, no meaning to the kind of frenzied desperation in Diarmuid’s actions; they would only be of any kind of value if victory were certain, if the hit landed could confirm the victim’s demise, if--

Waver’s hands seize to fists at the edge of the saddle, his whole body cants forward as if to throw himself between those flashing blades and Iskandar’s skin. “ _Iskandar_!” His voice is shrill, it breaks and cracks on the heights of his panic, but Iskandar glances back at him, and all Waver needs is a moment. “Poison, they’re _poisoned!_ ” Waver’s heart is pounding, his breath catching on a terror of panic, but Iskandar’s expression just eases, relaxing as if something has come clear at once. He turns back to the fight, falling back farther, now, to keep himself clear of the swipe of those blades; not as far as Waver would like, but he can do nothing more than offer the warning. Diarmuid is still fighting like a man possessed, throwing himself into the line of Iskandar’s sword as if he means to skewer himself upon it, as if all his self-preservation has been stripped away by that one shouted order from Kayneth. There’s no sign of his awareness anymore, no sign of consciousness in the jerky pull of his motions or the shadow over his eyes; he looks like a doll, as if he’s being moved by someone else, someone outside of his own body. The thought flickers over Waver’s mind, a phrasing more poetic than rational as he tries to make sense of what he’s seeing, and it’s then, as his eyes go wider with the rush of epiphany, that he really looks, and he truly sees.

It’s not Diarmuid fighting on the field below. His body is moving, yes, his weapons are still gripped in his hands: but there’s white-knuckled strain at his fingers and along his arms, the tendons at his neck are standing out stark against the bloodless pale of his skin. His natural grace is gone, stripped from him along with the elegance that he demonstrated in the first span of the fight; he moves like a puppet, now, as if his limbs are being forced into motion by the hand of a child careless about the damage that might be done to a toy. Waver stares at the fight another moment, Diarmuid’s blades flashing light up into his eyes to steal the focus he’s turning inward already; and then he lifts his gaze, and he looks up at Kayneth across the field.

Kayneth isn’t looking at him. Kayneth is staring at the fight below, as he has been this whole time; but his frigid composure is utterly gone, now, stripped away along with the restraint in his expression. His face is flushed, his cheeks burning a feverish red as his hair falls loose to cling to the sweat at his forehead, and his hands are tight at his reins, his grip as fixed on the leather as Diarmuid’s is on his spears. Waver stares, his mind mapping a straight-line between one man and the other; and then he swallows hard, and he looks back to the field to stare at the flicker of sunlight off the flashing weapons.

It’s hard to catch one. The light is blinding, it glints off the metal of armor and the edge of blade alike, but Waver’s instinct is to flinch instead of staring into it to catch at the reflection he needs. But he has to catch it, he has to be _sure_ : and then Iskandar’s sword comes up, and sunlight flashes back into Waver’s face, and in the blaze of light across his eyes he can see it. The rest of his vision is gone, burnt out of holding by the flare of illumination into his eyes, but in the pain of too-much he can see what else is there, can see the trail of shadow winding like a snake around Diarmuid’s clumsy body. It’s a smudge of black against the white, a suggestion of nothing when there should be something; and Waver can follow it back almost without effort, as if he already knew where to look, as if the trail is forming for his heat-starred gaze as quickly as he traces it. Away from the battlefield, back to the rows of soldiers beginning to murmur judgment, now, over Waver’s shouted warning; to Kayneth, hunched forward in his saddle and with his hair blazing as bright as the sunlight and his skin as pale as bone. Waver sees the dark winding around him, curling around his shoulders like a snake before it trails down to link itself to rings around the tension of his fingers; and then he blinks, and his vision clears, and it’s just Kayneth again, tipped forward into the impossible tension of a tight-held spell as he steers his follower’s body towards the murder of Waver’s king.

Waver only stares for a moment. There’s enough there, proof enough to be found by his own spelled vision, but there’s no time to shout a warning, no time to offer explanation. Diarmuid is still lunging at Iskandar, forced into motion by the untiring work of the spell capturing him, and Iskandar is slowing; hardly perceptibly, barely at all, but slowing all the same, more awkward in his blows than he was and a little heavier in his footfalls. It’s a matter of minutes at best before one of those shining blades tears Iskandar’s skin, at his arm or his knee or his jaw, and it will be over then, regardless of what judgment may land on Kayneth’s meddling after. Waver cannot sit still and let his brother’s machinations go unresisted; and he turns, twisting in the invisibility of his own unimportance to reach and clutch at the bow and quiver slung over the back of Iskandar’s horse.

His bow is strung already; a fact for which Waver is deeply grateful, at the moment. He could string it himself, if he slid off the horse to steady his footing for the effort, but it’s a delay he can’t afford, and he can only get the shot he needs from his present perch. Better to lift the bow before him, to struggle into an angle to get the weapon curving up over the neck of Iskandar’s horse as he slings the quiver over his shoulder and draws an arrow free. There is noise rising around him, now, protests and warnings as the army begins to react to the possibility of poison and the bad faith such represents, but Diarmuid and Iskandar are moving too quickly now, any intervention is as likely to doom their king as save him. They hold back yet, lingering at the edge of the circle marked out for the battle; and from the fringe of it Waver lifts the bow into a smooth arc, and catches his fingers at the end of the arrow to draw it back across the span of his chest.

There’s a calm to the action. Waver is surrounded by shouting men, the dull roar of anger rising like a tide around him; even the men on the other side are stirring, restive in answer to the rage building on the far side of the circle from them. Before him Waver’s king is fighting for his life, barely keeping back the poisoned blades wielded by a curse-controlled puppet from drawing a line of scarlet death across his skin; but Waver’s arms are straining on effort, and his arrow is swinging up into his field of view, and everything else fades out of importance. He lines up his shot -- over the heads of the enemy soldiers, arcing over the rush of combat before him -- straight towards Kayneth’s distracted frown. His fingers tighten, his arm tenses in expectation of the shot; and memory catches, his arm flexes, and he draws the end of the arrow up, adjusting his aim with as much steady consideration as if Iskandar’s hand is there to urge against the line of his forearm. Waver blinks, shedding the last of the sunspots from his vision as he gazes across the field at his half-brother; and then his fingers ease, the string snaps hard against the guard at his forearm, and Kayneth jerks in his saddle, knocked backwards by the impact of Waver’s shot.

Kayneth’s hand comes up from his reins, reaching to clutch at his shoulder where the feathered end of Waver’s arrow is jutting from a gap in his fine-polished armor; but Waver is looking away without even waiting for his target to lift his gaze and glare at him. It’s the battle he cares about, the fight before him that steals his breath; and as he looks Diarmuid’s head comes up, his shoulders going slack as he stumbles backwards. He only stays on his feet for a moment, trembling through his whole body like a leaf in a high wind; and then he crumbles, collapsing to slump to the ground as his spears fall from his slack hands. Iskandar stands still for a moment, his sword still raised to block the last of Diarmuid’s attacks; then he lets his weapon fall, and raises his gaze to look up at Waver. Their eyes meet from across the distance between them, hold for a moment of breathless anticipation, and then Iskandar’s face breaks wide on an enormous grin, and he raises his fist high in the air overhead. A cheer bursts from the men, a roar of sound enough to eclipse even the shrill of Kayneth’s rage, but Waver doesn’t look to the joy of the army behind him, or the fury of his brother before him, or even to the slumped weight of Diarmuid’s unconscious form. He’s looking at Iskandar, whole and healthy and glowing with victory, and relief swells in him until his own smile is a perfect match for his king’s.


	29. Regal

The resistance dies with Kayneth’s surrender. The battle was over as soon as Waver’s arrow struck home to sever Kayneth’s attention and drop Diarmuid to unconscious weight against the packed earth of the field, and the rest of the men that compose Kayneth’s army seem to see that, even as Kayneth seethes and shouts protest as he’s taken aside to have his hands bound under guard. He continues to hiss imprecations in Waver’s direction, vicious comments on his mother’s virtue, on his own, on his king’s, but as it turns out the best means to silencing him is providing the medical attention that begins with wrenching Waver’s arrow free of his shoulder. That leaves Kayneth white and pale with pain for at least a few minutes, and by the time his wound is bandaged someone has laid hands to cloth that can serve as a gag enough to stem the flood of vitriol from his lips. That does for Kayneth, and Iskandar’s victory over a magicked opponent does for the army; Waver can see the awe in the faces of the men as he and Iskandar ride through the crowd of what were enemies an hour hence, what will shortly be subjects. Their gazes are turned up as Iskandar guides his horse carefully through them, eyes wide and expressions knocked blank on shock, and as many of their gazes linger on Waver as on Iskandar behind him. There’s none of the judgment that used to be there, none of the barely-restrained disdain that Waver always saw in the faces of those around him when he was last on this side of his country’s border; but he finds himself flushing all the same, as uncomfortable in the glow of attention and awed respect as he ever was in the suffocating pressure of the palace itself. He fixes his gaze ahead instead of down, looking to the castle awaiting them instead of to the men made followers by that one victory, and he lets Iskandar smile and wave acknowledgment on behalf of the both of them as they pass.

There’s no fight in the castle grounds themselves. The size of the army they leave on the field behind them speaks to that clearly enough -- Waver is sure Kayneth must have emptied the barracks to bring enough men to meet Iskandar’s armies -- but there’s not even the token protest of a closed gate standing in their way when they arrive. The guards stand aside for Iskandar’s entrance, holding the gates wide to make space for their conqueror to ride forward, and Iskandar takes the unspoken invitation without hesitating. He rides all the way to the main courtyard of the palace, the expanse of the front entrance that Waver has only passed through a handful of times and always with guards lingering next to him; it’s only once they’re before the wide white steps leading up to the main hall that he dismounts, his crimson cloak flaring wide around him. Waver holds to the edge of the saddle where Iskandar has left him, unsure whether he should stay with the horse or follow the other inside, but Iskandar makes the decision for him before Waver can muster the confidence to ask. He holds up a hand towards Waver still perched at the front of the saddle and lifts his head to gaze up at the other; the light catches his face to warmth and glows in his eyes even before his mouth curves onto a smile.

“Come, princeling,” Iskandar tells him. “Time to claim what’s yours.” Waver looks at him for a moment, feeling his heart pounding, feeling his eyes burning; and then he ducks his head into a nod, and he reaches out to brace his hand in Iskandar’s unflinching hold and let himself be drawn down to stand on his own two feet on the palace grounds.

The king is waiting in the throne room. The castle is silent, breathless with its own quiet as if the whole building is holding its breath, or deep in mourning for the surrender on the faraway battlefield; the blood and heat and chaos don’t touch these walls, don’t intrude into the quiet of the space around them. Waver feels his presence and Iskandar’s as the invasion it is, laden as they are with the dust and sweat of the battle so recently won, but Iskandar strides forward into the hallways as if laying claim to them, his pace so certain Waver feels as if his presence is expanding out to overwhelm the castle and demand tribute from the very walls themselves. It’s easy to follow in his wake, to be drawn along by the certainty of his forward stride, until Waver can almost forget where they’re bound, can almost lose track of what and who is waiting for them. There’s just the span of Iskandar’s shoulders before him, and the steady weight of Iskandar’s steps thudding against the floorstones beneath them; and then Iskandar pushes against a broad pair of doors, his arms flexing with the effort as he heaves them open, and it’s as Waver steps through the oversized entryway that he looks up, and he sees his father.

The king is at the far side of the room. There are a few guards here, a handful arrayed in a semicircle around the throne itself, but they are standing at attention rather than reaching for their weapons, and they don’t move as Iskandar and Waver come forward across the echoing distance of the empty space. Waver wonders, distantly, where the nobility is, those lords and ladies who were so quick to sneer at his birth and to fawn over even Kayneth’s least tolerable mannerisms; and then he sets the thought aside as unimportant, as something to be asked later, because they’re coming up to the dais and the guards are parting, stepping aside to form a channel between them leading to the throne and the king sitting upon it.

Waver’s father is a far cry from the seething frustration of his oldest son. He is calm, stately in his elegance where he has framed himself in the grandeur of his position and the weight of his status. His hair is laid to perfect smoothness, his clothes are as pristine as those of a doll; he’s everything Waver once imagined as a king, everything Waver believed a king should be. Waver looks at him, at the distant ice of those eyes and the regal weight of his father’s position, structured into such deliberate grace to sit in a chair; and then he looks up to Iskandar next to him, warm and dusty and glowing with life enough to overflow into everything he does, to touch everyone around him. Waver’s father rules by power of his birth, by the expectation of leadership that follows his name and his lineage; his men follow him by obligation, in the name of the country more than that of their king. Waver can never be a king like that; the possibility was stripped from him before his birth, by an accident of his origin that nonetheless shattered the fragility of his claim as surely as Kayneth’s inability to produce an heir doomed his own. But Iskandar is next to him, tall and broad and real in a way all Kayneth’s finery never made him, and Waver knows to whom he wants to offer his loyalty.

“Greetings,” Waver’s father says in a voice as cool and deliberately composed as his position on the throne. “We are given to understand that your forces have triumphed over those led by our son.” His gaze doesn’t so much as flicker to Waver at Iskandar’s side but Waver doesn’t feel the absence; he’s not certain his father is even truly seeing Iskandar, for all that his gaze is ostensibly fixed on him.

Iskandar’s teeth flash in his usual bright, blinding smile. “That’s right,” he says, with more warmth just on those words than Waver has ever heard from his father towards anyone. His hand comes out to clasp at Waver’s shoulder and squeeze with pressure enough to draw them together into a single unit. “We’re here to take your surrender, since your heir proved unwilling to grant it.”

The king inclines his head in acknowledgment. Even this reference to Kayneth doesn’t draw any kind of response from him; Waver wonders if he knew the details of Kayneth’s plan to begin with or if he just doesn’t care. He doesn’t know which would be more damning.

“And we are here to offer it in exchange for preventing more bloodshed.” The king lifts his head and braces his hands on the arms of the throne to push to his feet. Even with the height of his crown Iskandar overtops him, but it hardly makes a difference; he’s only standing long enough to sweep his clothing wide of his feet so he can move to kneel before Iskandar.

“We hereby relinquish the throne of this country.” He reaches to his head to carefully extricate the crown from his hair and hold it up, braced in both hands before Iskandar reaches to take it. “Our claim, as well as the claim of any of our blood heirs, is henceforth rendered void.” Freed of his burden, the king lowers his hands and raises his gaze back up towards Iskandar; he fixes his attention somewhere at the other’s chest, rather than craning his neck to meet his eyes. “I do formally request the grace of your Majesty in allowing myself and my son our lives.”

“I’m sure you do,” Iskandar says. He’s still holding the crown between his hands; Waver expects him to lift it to his head, to set the gold into place against the flame red of his hair. But when Iskandar moves it’s to reach out instead, extending his arm sideways instead of up to press the curve of the crown so hard against Waver’s chest that he loses his breath as much on the force as on surprise. Waver lifts his hands to brace the gold, on instinct as much as anything else, as he looks up to Iskandar next to him; the other man is watching him, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth before he looks away and lets his hold on the crown go. “That’ll be the decision of your other son to make.”

The king’s gaze swings sideways, veering sharply in answer to Iskandar’s words. Some part of his composure fractures, giving way to overt shock as he stares at Waver as if he’s only just seeing him, as if he truly hadn’t recognized him before this moment; but Waver is too busy being startled out of himself to relish the gratifying surprise on his father’s face.

“ _What_?” he blurts, shock too keen in him to restrain his voice to anything like calm. “What are you _doing_?”

Iskandar doesn’t so much as bat an eye at Waver’s shock. “It is your decision,” he says, his voice as steady as if they’re speaking of plans for the evening rather than the life or death of Waver’s father and half-brother. “It was your brother’s plot that forced you out of your own country. I brought you back to give you this choice.” He pivots back, shifting to face Waver fully. “What is your decision, Waver Velvet?”

Waver looks around. Iskandar’s not the only one staring at him: the guards around the dais are too, their deliberate composure forgotten in their surprise at Iskandar’s declaration. And his father: still on his knees from offering his country to Iskandar’s keeping, looking up now to stare at Waver as if he’s never seen him before, as if this is the first time he’s really looking at him. Waver looks down at his father’s face, at the features so like his own but cast into the regal coloring that he has always lacked, and he thinks of a shadow in a courtyard, blood spilled at a palace gate, a summons breaking into the peaceful quiet of his life. He thinks of the sneer at the lips of a brother he never asked to know, of a father who uses the lives of other people as a weapon to punish someone for a failure they can’t help; and he thinks of Iskandar’s hand at the back of his head, and a slice at the base of his thumb, and the rumble of a voice: _a true ruler doesn’t kill unless he must_ , and his hands tighten against the crown in his hands until he can feel the edges digging hurt against his skin.

“Let them live,” he says. His voice feels fragile, thin in the overlarge space of the throne room; he presses his lips together, lifts his head, tries again. “There’s no need to claim the life of either of them, or of the princess. Let them live.”

“Very well,” Iskandar says. His voice is steady, his tone calm enough that Waver thinks he would sound as easy regardless of Waver’s decision, but when Waver looks up at him there’s a smile at his lips, a soft in his eyes that leaves no doubt of his approval. Iskandar lifts a hand to gesture over one of the guards from their position ringing the dais. “Take the former king to one of the guest quarters for now.” The guard ducks his head, apparently as willing to obey this new leader as his former one; Waver’s father doesn’t move until the guard lays hand to his arm to urge him to his feet and away, and even then he goes on staring at Waver until the guard pulls him around into a turn to move towards the exit.

Iskandar waves his hand. “Leave us,” he says, and the guards move to obey at once, shuffling into motion quickly enough that they have caught up with Waver’s father by the time they reach the door. Waver watches them go, waiting until the wide span of the doors have swung shut in their wake; it’s only when the weight is closed on them and there’s no one in the space but himself and Iskandar that Iskandar heaves a sigh as if of relief and turns to look at him.

“So,” he says. “We have returned to your home country. We have taken the battle and taken the city.” He ducks his head to nod towards the crown still in Waver’s grip. “You even have that crown that caused such troubles for you.” He rocks back onto his heels and crosses his arms over his chest as he looks down at Waver before him. “What is it that you wish to do now? Will you take the throne that your brother tried to keep from you?” Iskandar’s expression is unreadable; he’s just watching Waver, his gaze steady on the other’s features as he considers him. “Is it the cheers of your countrymen you dream of?”

Waver’s fingers clench hard against the crown in his grip. For a moment he can’t speak, can’t even give voice to the emotion in his throat; finally he shakes his head, hard, struggling through the motion made rough by the strain under it.

“Don’t be an idiot,” he chokes out, and extends the crown in both hands. “This is yours.”

Iskandar ducks his head forward, the motion one of surrender even if the meaning is not. He uncrosses his arms, draws a foot back by a span, and when he lowers himself it’s to bend forward, folding down to take a knee in front of Waver before him. Waver’s breath catches, he rocks back on his heels; but Iskandar’s head stays bowed before him, and Waver’s still holding the crown in his hands. They stand still like that for a moment, Iskandar kneeling before Waver and Waver looking down at him with the crown of his country braced between both hands; and then Waver takes a breath, and takes a step, and comes closer to where Iskandar is waiting for him.

“I name you king,” he says, and his voice is shaking again but there’s no one to hear but Iskandar, and no one to judge him at all. “Sworn ruler of all this land.” The crown is heavy in his hands and his arms are shaking with the support of it, but it settles easy against Iskandar’s brilliant hair, the gold weight of it sinking into place like it belongs there. Waver steadies it, certain of his action; and then he draws his hands away. Iskandar looks up at him, his gaze as steady now as it ever is, and Waver takes a breath and straightens his shoulders so he can lift his hand and gesture to the throne.

“Take your throne,” he says, and his voice is level, now, as clear and regal as he thinks he has ever sounded. Iskandar’s mouth curves wide, breaking over a grin, and for a moment Waver thinks he’s going to reach out over the distance between them; but Iskandar just pushes to his feet and turns to step forward and claim official rule of the country around them.

There’s no one to see but Waver, but he’s still watching, and for once he doesn’t doubt that he’s enough.


	30. Tribute

The celebration spills over past sunset and well into the late hours of the night. Waver intends to speak with Iskandar at the first opportunity -- he has much to say, if he can take the few minutes he needs to bring his words in line with his thoughts -- but their interlude in the throne room hardly lasts for a span of breaths before the doors come open to spill Iskandar’s men into the space, and the tide of cheers and laughter and good-natured teasing sweeps Waver forward through the remaining daylight hours almost without him noticing. He washes, at some point, claiming a round in the enormous baths at the barracks and rinsing the dust of travel and the sweat of the battlefield from his skin with the roaring amusement of soldiers revelling in their continued survival filling his ears, and when he emerges there are clothes available for him, brought in by some extremely well-informed soldier or maybe by a servant more aware of his existence than Waver ever gave them credit for. They’re his old clothes, the ones he left behind him on his necessarily precipitous departure from the palace grounds, but they’ve been kept in his absence, whether by intention or oversight Waver doesn’t know and doesn’t care to guess which, and they still fit well enough, for all the strength he’s gained in the flex of his shoulders and the draw of his arms. It feels strange to be in his old clothes, like he can feel all the miles and days that have passed in every smooth seam against his skin, but the tide of humanity around him is moving towards the kitchens, and Waver has no choice and no inclination to do anything other than be borne forward along the halls and across the grounds of the castle and into the raucous celebration the soldiers are making of their meal.

There’s no structure to it. The banquet in Iskandar’s palace was loud, overfull and spilling over with the enthusiasm of every person there, but what Waver took then for chaos is ordered with militaristic care compared to what’s happening now. Soldiers wander the whole grounds of the palace, eating and drinking everywhere they can find food to lay hands to or a corner to linger in for a moment of peace to themselves, and the later it gets the more the effects of their drinking come clear. Waver paces out the halls for nearly an hour, just letting the force of the revelry wash over him; and then he turns his feet, and shifts his focus, and returns to the throne room.

Iskandar is still there, of course. He’s given over actually sitting on the throne to settling cross-legged at the edge of the dais with as many men as can fit themselves around him, but his change in position does nothing at all to diminish the regality of his carriage. He’s still in his cloak from the battlefield, although he’s shed his armor at some point; he looks as comfortable toasting goblets of expensive wine with a golden crown on his head as he did training Waver with his bow in the camps they made on their way here, or as he appeared on the training grounds where he and Waver spent the first few days of their acquaintance. Waver watches him for a few minutes, lingering in the shadows by the doors to the throne room unseen; and then a hand claps his shoulder, a stranger’s voice calls out “Here’s our young hero!” and Waver finds himself swept into a cheer from a double handful of soldiers tipsy on victory as much as on wine. A cup is pressed into his hold, hands clap hard against his shoulders to knock him almost into a fall before he makes his way to the middle of the circle of well-wishers, and in the surge of enthusiasm Waver finds himself held up as part of Iskandar’s army the same as the men around him. No one comments on his youth, or his parentage, or his unusually fine clothes; Waver isn’t even sure they know he’s the prince in whose name Iskandar led this entire undertaking. It’s enough that he held a bow on the battlefield, and that it was his shot that allowed Iskandar to claim his victory; and Waver finds himself smiling without fighting for the expression, as warmed by the sincere welcome he finds in the gazes of the men around him as by the sweet of the wine in the cup they pressed into his hand.

Hours pass uncounted. Waver’s thoughts are spinning, dizzy-drunk with wine and cheer and enjoyment; it’s not until the last pair of the soldiers around him begin to slur themselves towards sleep that he realizes the sound in the room has eased, that what was a roar of cheer has softened to a murmur made up as much by snores as anything else. His own cluster of well-wishers have collapsed around him in various states of exhaustion; several are asleep outright, and many more are making only a passing effort at holding themselves awake. All across the expanse of the room there are soldiers, asleep or drinking themselves in that direction, toppled in against each other or walls or just sprawling across the whole floor, too tired or too drunk to notice to discomfort of their position. Waver’s entourage is drifting too; even as he looks back to them one of the two remaining upright slips off the support of his partner’s shoulder, carried down by sleep, and the other is blinking bleary eyes even as he goes on beaming at Waver. The only group still alert at all is up on the dais, where Iskandar has been drinking with unceasing focus since Waver saw him; and as Waver’s last companions drowse themselves into sleep Iskandar groans loud enough that Waver can hear it echo off the walls and gets to his feet to stretch enormously.

“I will fall asleep here on the throne if I remain longer,” he declares. “And I desire very much to see how comfortable the beds here are, outside of a guest’s cell.” That gets him a laugh, which he answers with a broad grin at his audience. “We shall resume with morning’s light!” Those men still alert enough to respond give him a cheer, still warm with sincerity for all that it’s a little ragged on incoherence, and Iskandar steps forward to descend from the dais. He claps a hand to a shoulder as he passes, offers a wave in answer to a sleepy shout of his name from the far corner of the room, but his path is straight and sure, cutting smoothly across the throne room to make for the door. Waver watches him for a moment, dazed out of action by the glow of the cups of wine he’s swallowed and the threat of sleep encroaching onto his awareness; it’s only as Iskandar reaches for the door to the throne room to push it open and step out that Waver’s eyes open wide on realization and he moves to struggle clumsily to his feet.

“Wait,” he says. “Wait, Iskandar!” But his voice is weak and ill-framed to carry through the enormous space of the throne room, and the door swings shut without any sign that Iskandar heard him. Waver hesitates for a moment, wondering if he should let this go, if he should just wait for the morning; but then he looks around him, at the array of men who have drunk and celebrated themselves into restfulness, and he’s sure in every part of him that exists that he won’t have a better chance than this. The morning will bring more activity, demands on Iskandar’s time and attention and focus; it’s only now, with the effect of the recent battle keeping him front of mind and the rest of Iskandar’s following out of commission for the next few hours, that Waver stands any chance at all of getting what he wants.

He has to struggle to free himself of the crowd around him. There are people sprawled everywhere, arms and legs thrown uncaring into the path of where Waver would like to step, and Waver’s own balance is not precisely steady, which makes maneuvering himself to the door of the room more of a challenge than Iskandar’s graceful progress made it look. But he gets there eventually, his heart hammering on greater speed as his path clarifies itself, and by the time he pushes open the door and steps out into the hall Iskandar’s cloak is just disappearing around the corner.

“Iskandar!” Waver shouts again, just in case his voice will carry farther in the narrower hallways, but he’s not waiting for a response. He’s moving, tipping forward into a jog as quickly as he clears the doorway of the throne room to chase after that glimpse of his king. The hallway isn’t long, and made less so by Waver’s hasty pace, but his heart is skidding, his thoughts are whirling, until by the time he rounds the corner around which Iskandar disappeared he feels as if he’s been striding through a minor eternity of uncertainty, selling his breath for each step he gains on the other. Iskandar’s nearer, now; Waver has to press his lips together and struggle to clear his throat before he can muster voice for another shout.

“Iskandar,” he attempts, calling out as he rocks forward into movement again. “Wait. Iskandar!” His voice is gaining in volume, jumping shrill octaves of desperation as his pace increases; in the haze of adrenaline swamping his coherency Waver doesn’t realize, at first, that Iskandar has paused, doesn’t see that he’s turning. It’s only as the other looks back over his shoulder that Waver realizes he’s been heard, and by then he’s moving with all the speed of a sprint. He rocks back at once, slowing himself as quickly as he may, but his motions are clumsy and the floor is slick, and in the end he thinks his stop is more from Iskandar’s arms catching him than from anything he actually manages in himself.

“Whoa there,” Iskandar says, amusement audible in his tone. Waver can feel the heat of it against the other’s chest, where his precipitous motion flung him face-first. “I thought you were asleep.” His hold loosens as Waver steadies his footing; one hand comes up to stroke down against the other’s hair with easy affection. “If there is something you need of me, princeling, it is yours for the asking.”

“Iskandar,” Waver says. He’s not running anymore, he’s still on his feet and steadied by Iskandar’s hold; but his heart is speeding as if he’s sprinting yet, as if his motion has only increased instead of stilling. His hands are against Iskandar’s shirt; his skin is burning, flickering with self-awareness all across his chest, fingertips, neck, everywhere he and Iskandar touched. He lifts his head to meet Iskandar’s gaze, unsure what he’s looking for, what he could hope to see. Iskandar is watching him, his mouth curving onto a smile that softens the corners of his eyes; he looks almost distracted, like his smile is an unconscious thing, an expression of personal appreciation rather than encouragement for Waver himself. He looks tender, as gentle in his gaze as in the hand trailing against the back of Waver’s neck to settle at his shoulder, and Waver can feel his whole heart clench on want as strong as a fist. He tries for a breath, aiming to steady himself for action; and then he gives it up, and reaches up to press both hands at the sides of Iskandar’s face as he comes up onto his toes to pin his lips against the curve of that wide mouth.

Waver can feel Iskandar’s smile ease, can feel the shape of it soften with the weight of surprise at this unanticipated contact. The steadying hands at his neck and waist go still, motionless as if frozen; the only thing still moving is Waver, trembling through the whole of his body with helpless force that he can’t seem to stifle. His fingers tense at Iskandar’s face, his thumb slides over the other’s beard; his mouth is closed but he can’t think how to open his lips, can’t figure out how to soften the brittle strain holding him so taut. He just stays where he is, his mouth pressing flush to Iskandar’s still lips, before the tremors in him become too much and he has to fall back to his heels and gasp for air. Waver’s thoughts are blank, silent even as his body shivers with impossible tension, until he feels the breath Iskandar takes like a blow, until he can feel the shift of each individual finger tightening in the grip at his shoulder.

“You kiss like a maiden girl, princeling.” Iskandar’s voice is deeper than it should be, so dark that Waver feels it down in the pit of his stomach before he can parse the words, so the color at his cheeks is rising like a tide even before embarrassment crests sharp in him to steal his hard-won breath from his lips.

“And whose fault is that?” he finally manages, his voice straining but achieving some measure of edge just on sheer desperation. Iskandar blinks at him and Waver sets his jaw and forces himself to hold the other’s gaze even as his face burns as red as Iskandar’s hair. “Is it not the responsibility of my king to see me well-trained?”

Iskandar looks at him for a moment: silent, motionless, just gazing at Waver before him. Then he lifts his hand from Waver’s waist, easing his hold from the other with such care that Waver can feel his entire body prickle with awareness of the motion even before Iskandar lifts his hand to smooth Waver’s hair back from his face with breathless care. His hands cradle Waver’s face, his hold gentle but absolutely unflinching, and then Iskandar ducks down, and he kisses Waver.

There’s no tremor in Iskandar at all. His hold is steady, his fingers careful; his action is certain as the tide, as absolute as the dawn. He kisses Waver like he did on the battlefield, turning the whole immediacy of his presence to focus on this one single task, and all Waver can do is clutch at him, curl his hands into a hold against whatever he can grab at to try to hold himself steady. His balance tips, his feet scuff backwards over the floor, but Iskandar’s hands are holding him upright and Iskandar follows him in, lingering long over the weight of his mouth against Waver’s lips, his tongue within Waver’s mouth, his whole presence urging Waver back and back and back until Waver runs up against resistance and stops, caught between Iskandar’s shoulders and the support at his back. Iskandar’s hand urges against the back of his head, tipping Waver’s head up to better angle against his own, his tongue mapping out the inside of Waver’s mouth with languid care, and Waver’s breath is dragging in his chest, pulling to a moan too hot for him to attempt to restrain. His body is curving up, his back arching and his arms straining to bring himself closer, to drag Iskandar down against him; his focus is so engrossed in the thud of want running through his body that it’s only the weight of Iskandar’s hand bracing at his jaw that brings him back to the moment, that holds him still as the other draws back and away from his mouth. Waver shudders over an exhale, hears the sound of it fracture to a whimper in spite of himself, and against him Iskandar clears his throat with enough force that Waver can feel it against the hands he has curling to fists at the front of Iskandar’s shirt.

“Is this the kind of training you desire?” Iskandar asks. His voice is more than husky, more than hot; Waver quakes under the force of it, his body responding to the sound with an instinct as ingrained as that of a chilled body seeking out a fire. “Tell me, Waver Velvet.” His hand falls from Waver’s hair; fingers skim Waver’s waist, drop over his hip to sketch a curve against the edge of his body. “Is this what you would have of me?”

Waver can’t loosen his grip on Iskandar’s shirt, can’t slow his heart, can’t ease his breath. His legs are trembling, his shoulders are flexing; the whole of his body feels taut, as if he’s a bow drawn back into a straining curve by the easy force of Iskandar’s hands. It takes conscious effort to close his mouth, to reel in his thoughts, before he can manage to duck his head into a desperate nod. He’s not sure it’ll be enough, for a moment; but then Iskandar breathes out a sigh, and Waver gasps a breath like a sob as Iskandar’s hand comes in steady against Waver’s hip.

“Come, then,” Iskandar rumbles. “I’ll welcome this tribute too, my princeling.” And he lifts, and Waver reaches to cling to Iskandar’s neck and press his face into the lining of the other’s cloak as Iskandar bears him away down the hall towards the privacy of a bedchamber.


	31. Yielding

Iskandar is more gentle than Waver had expected him to be.

Waver has considered this more than once, in the drowsy haze of early-morning desire or the shadows of late nights when the friction of Iskandar’s touch lingered like a burn across his shoulders or at the line of his arm. He’s spent enough time watching the play of muscle across the other’s arms and the easy confidence in his forward stride to imagine the way that confidence would sweep over him, to picture the way those arms would look bracing him down to the sheets of a bed or the give of a bedroll. Waver has dreamt of being taken, of being held down and urged into a surrender that breaks itself on the leading edge of Iskandar’s unstoppable presence; and it’s now, in the shuddering self-consciousness of reality, that he finds gentleness waiting for him instead.

“You don’t have to baby me,” Waver protests from the inside of the shirt Iskandar is presently tugging up and over his head. He emerges from the collar with a frown on his face and a hunch in his shoulders as tension demands expression of some kind, resistance enough to make up for the too-much care Iskandar is turning on him when all Waver wants is to be overcome. “I’m not a child, I know what I’m asking for.”

“You do not,” Iskandar says, his voice infuriatingly level as he drops Waver’s shirt over the edge of the bed. The mattress is expansive, wide enough to suit the whole of Iskandar’s overlarge frame; Waver could be swallowed in the spill of blankets without even being noted at all. Waver doesn’t know whose quarters these are, what room Iskandar has claimed as his own with the weight of the crown and the cloak he cast aside upon their arrival, and he doesn’t care: enough that there is a bed, and that Iskandar is here with him, and that his clothes are coming off, if rather more deliberately than he might wish. “You are treading into unknown territory, princeling, there is no shame in caution when first mapping ground.”

Waver rolls his eyes. “It’s not _your_ first time,” he says, aware the words are true and still wishing in a foolish, childish way for Iskandar to correct him. “You know what you’re doing.”

“I do,” Iskandar says, still without rising to even the flicker of irritation Waver wishes distantly he could draw from him. “Which is why I am going to go slowly with you. It will be better for you like this. Trust me.”

Waver presses his lips together, feeling his eyes burn with heat he is only barely holding back. His whole self feels overhot, tears and desire and embarrassment fighting for control until he feels like he’s running a fever, as if he’s likely to work himself into a delirium just from the too-much intensity of his feelings. “Don’t--” His voice breaks, another point for his embarrassment; he has to duck his head and struggle through a breath before he can go on. “Don’t you _want_ me?”

There’s a beat, a breath of hesitation while Waver’s eyes burn with unhappiness, and then: a hand at his chin, fingers tightening to draw his gaze up. Waver stares at Iskandar for a moment, his bruised feelings clear on his face before he can restrain them, but Iskandar isn’t looking at his expression; he’s leaning in instead, rocking forward even as he braces a hand at the bed alongside Waver’s hip to balance himself. His mouth catches Waver’s, his lips urge weight and heat and pressure against the other’s, and Waver reaches to grab for Iskandar’s hair, whimpering something embarrassing and helpless against the weight of the other’s mouth. Iskandar’s hand drops from his chin to cup the back of his head instead, to hold Waver in place as the other licks into his mouth, and Waver makes an offering of himself at once, unhesitating even as his whole body prickles into heat in answer to the friction of Iskandar’s mouth on his. There is force here, enough that he’s glad for the hand at his head to brace him steady against it, enough that when Iskandar draws back to pull a deep breath of air into his lungs Waver can’t find voice for himself at all for a moment, can’t do anything but hold to the fist he has at Iskandar’s shirt and in red hair and pant under the weight of the other’s gaze.

“Waver,” Iskandar says, his voice as dark as his eyes, as hot as the knot deep in Waver’s stomach. “I have wished to take you as my lover since even before your brother’s betrayal.” His weight shifts, his knee digs into the bed alongside Waver’s thigh; when he tips forward Waver’s leg slides in against the inside of Iskandar’s pants, pressing against solid heat enough to force perspective on all the rest of the other’s existence and to strip Waver’s breath clear from his lips. Iskandar’s lashes dip, his breath spills hot over Waver’s mouth in a sigh that very nearly shapes to a groan. “It is to ease my taking of you that I delay, not from an absence of interest in such.” He kisses Waver again, a hot press of mouth to mouth that tightens Waver’s fists again in spite of the color bleeding to stain embarrassment all across his cheeks before Iskandar pulls away once more to shake his head. “I swear to you, princeling, I will not leave you the option to doubt my desire before this night is past.”

Waver presses his lips tight together in an effort to restrain the squeak of sound in his throat, though he thinks this is less than entirely successful. Finally he swallows himself back to coherency and manages to duck his head into a nod. “Fine. If you say so.”

Iskandar flashes that brilliant grin at him. “Patience,” he soothes, and leans forward to tip Waver back towards the sheets behind him. Waver goes, his balance overthrown to the hold he has on Iskandar already and his rationality more than willing to get the closer to where he wants to be; Iskandar kisses at the side of his jaw and down against the line of his neck before he pulls back to stand at the end of the bed over Waver before him. Waver cranes his neck to look up at Iskandar near his knees instead of at the blank of the ceiling, and then Iskandar reaches out to lay hands to the fastenings at the front of Waver’s pants and he looks away again in a hurry as self-consciousness refuses to watch Iskandar stripping him down to the exposed evidence of his own desire.

“I wasn’t certain of your own feelings for some time,” Iskandar says, speaking as calmly as if he’s talking of Waver’s skill with a bow rather than weeks of unvoiced desire. “It was only at that first inn that I became certain.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Waver protests, listening to his voice jump higher in spite of his best efforts to the contrary. “I was a complete child about that.”

“And it was your blush that gave you away,” Iskandar says. The waistband of Waver’s pants comes loose and Waver’s breath catches in his chest, but then Iskandar’s fingers settle at his waist to drawn down over the curve of his hips and his inhale spills  into the outline of a moan instead as his skin glows with fire coaxed there by Iskandar’s touch. “I thought you would be sharing my bedroll within the week, after that.”

“I’m glad I wasn’t _completely_ predictable,” Waver bites back, but Iskandar meets his bitter sarcasm with a rumbling laugh that Waver can feel pool heat in his belly as if it’s arousal instead of sound at Iskandar’s lips.

“Indeed,” he says. “It will be better for your first time in the comfort of a bed.” He pulls at the waistband of Waver’s pants and the cloth slides down, dragging to bare Waver down to his knees in one motion. Waver’s cheeks color darker with the cool of air against the flushed heat of his cock, but Iskandar doesn’t even hesitate; he’s moving with intent to pull Waver’s pants off his legs and cast them aside onto the floor. Waver is left bare of the whole cover of his clothing, his skin pebbling with self-consciousness and chill at one and the same time, as Iskandar comes back to gaze down at him. His focus slides across Waver’s body, from the very top of his head over his uncertain gaze, his flushed cheeks, his trembling lips, and down farther still, against the quiver of Waver’s heart pounding on too-much speed in his chest and the flutter of strain at his stomach and the length of his cock, still throbbing defiant heat in spite of all Waver’s cresting embarrassment at being thus laid out for Iskandar’s consideration. Iskandar looks at all of him, lingering over the gazing like he’s savouring a fine wine, and then he breathes a sigh, and moves to lower himself to a knee at the end of the bed. His hands come down, his palms slide in to press to the inside of Waver’s thighs, and Waver is hissing over an inhale even before Iskandar takes a breath to speak with the calm certainty of obedience on his tone. “Spread your legs, princeling.” Waver whimpers in the back of his throat, the sound too instinctive for him to have any hope of holding it back, but he’s moving too, sliding his legs apart in answer to Iskandar’s touch as he looks up to the ceiling in a mostly-futile attempt to hold himself to some measure of coherency.

Iskandar’s hands are careful against his skin. Waver can feel the calluses at the other’s fingers, the ridges of battle carved into his fingerprints and laid in lines across his palms; he feels his own unmarked skin like a tell for his inexperience, a sign of his uncertainty in this as much as everything else. But Iskandar’s touch is certain, steady even as his hands press gently up against Waver’s thighs, and Waver can feel tension easing out of him, melting to leave him languid and trembling against the sheets in preemptive surrender to whatever Iskandar wishes to do to him. His cock is aching, straining towards his stomach with such insistent force that Waver has to consciously spread his fingers over the sheets next to him to resist the urge to close his grip around himself and stroke into relief. But he doesn’t want to touch himself, he wants to have this with Iskandar, wants to find his pleasure from the force and weight of the other over him, and even as he thinks it Iskandar hums in the back of his throat and draws his hands up over the tops of Waver’s thighs to grip and brace at his hips instead.

“I have been looking forward to this,” Iskandar says, his voice so low that Waver doesn’t even think to question the sincerity of the words, and then he ducks forward and presses his lips flush against the head of Waver’s cock.

Waver’s entire body spasms with the contact. He was expecting something else, the spill of oil or the press of those blunt fingers in against his body, maybe, from what vague sense of preparation his imagination has formed; this instant friction so precisely where he wants it is so much that for a moment he can hardly breathe, can’t make himself relax. His legs flex, his hips rock up against the grip Iskandar has on him, and when Iskandar draws Waver back into his mouth Waver’s breath breaks from him in a moan that goes keeningly high before he can restrain himself.

“ _Ah_ ,” he gasps. His hands are still on the sheets beside him, curling towards fists as if to brace himself still; Waver struggles one free so he can reach up instead, can grab desperately at the weight of Iskandar’s hair and pull back to urge the other away. “Iskandar, what--what are you _doing_?”

Iskandar draws back slowly, making far more of a process of pulling away from Waver than Waver himself thinks is necessary. Similarly unnecessary is the softness at Iskandar’s mouth, the give of his lips for a moment before he licks against them and gives way to a slow grin so unapologetically self-satisfied that Waver can feel his balls tighten with the heat of it.

“I had intended to give you the instruction you asked of me, princeling.” Iskandar shifts his hands on Waver’s hips; he looks not at all discomfited, either by Waver’s fist in his hair or by the taste of Waver’s cock against his lips. “Do you desire something different, now?”

“No,” Waver blurts, before he can think about the giveaway speed of this reply. “No, I don’t, but I.” His cheeks color, his throat tightens, but he forces himself into speech. “I thought you were going to…”

“Did you?” Iskandar suggests, and then grins as Waver’s face burns to scarlet. “And so I shall.”

“Fine,” Waver manages. “What does... _this_ have to do with _that_?”

Iskandar shifts his weight back slightly, like he’s making himself more comfortable where he’s kneeling between Waver’s spread knees. “This has to do with satisfying you, princeling,” he says, in the calm tone he always takes when he’s explaining something apparently obvious. “You’ll need to relax. This will make it easier, the first time.”

Waver’s jaw sets. He can feel the press of tears at the back of his eyes, though the heat of frustration keeps them unshed, for now. “I don’t _want_ to be satisfied like this.” His fingers twist into Iskandar’s hair, seeking a hold for himself instead of pulling the other in. “I want to...with you.”

Iskandar’s calm expression softens, his eyes going gentle to match the dip of his mouth. He lifts his hand from Waver’s hip to reach out and touch against the other’s face instead; his knuckles are very warm against Waver’s cheek. “You shall,” he says, his voice as gentle and as sure as the weight of his hands on Waver’s legs. “I swear it to you. We will have the time for such.” His hand drops, his fingers settle in against Waver’s hip again. “It will be better this way, the first time. Trust me.”

Waver can’t argue with that. He ducks his head into a nod, submitting even if his mouth is still tight on dissatisfaction, and when Iskandar ducks back in Waver lets him go without pulling at the fist he has in the other’s hair. Iskandar leans in over Waver, parting his lips to breathe out over the other’s length, and then he touches his tongue to Waver’s cock and Waver shudders again, his body tensing in a wave of sensation as Iskandar licks up against him. He falls back to the bed as tension gives way to heat, and as Iskandar draws in to take Waver back over his tongue Waver shuts his eyes and lets the pressure of Iskandar’s mouth sweep out and over the whole of his attention.

It’s overwhelming. Iskandar is always overwhelming, in voice and body and sheer presence, in the size and scope of everything he is and does; in this moment, as they are, it’s hard for Waver to remember how to breathe, to remember that he _needs_ to breathe, for the friction of Iskandar’s mouth sliding down against him, and Iskandar’s tongue dragging up over his length, and the heat so bright and sun-hot that he can’t even think for its effect on his attention. His legs are tensing, his hands are fisting, his feet are dragging to struggle for traction at the edge of the bed, but it doesn’t matter: Iskandar just keeps moving, sliding his mouth down and over Waver to draw pleasure out into the other almost faster than Waver can stand to feel it. Waver’s body is tensing, his skin flushing, his mouth open on such heat he can’t even give it voice, and still Iskandar moves, stroking over him and tightening that knot in his belly until he can’t hold it back, until the pressure is laying claim to the whole of his existence, until it’s Iskandar’s motions that are guiding Waver’s trembling inhales far more than the other way around.

It hits Waver all at once, when it comes. It hardly seems the space of a few breaths, barely enough time even to gain an understanding of what is happening to him, to form a recollection of what it feels like to have Iskandar’s mouth on him, Iskandar’s lips against him, Iskandar’s tongue sliding over him; it seems an eternity, one long, endless climb towards some summit that Waver has never glimpsed before, some height he’s never before scaled. His heart is racing, his eyes wide and sightless with heat, his fingers white-knuckled in Iskandar’s hair; and Iskandar shifts his weight, and lifts his hand, and it’s as his fingers curl in to stroke gently over the taut of Waver’s balls that Waver jerks, and shouts, and comes in a single endless spasm of heat. Iskandar’s mouth is still against him, lips pressing tight against his shaft and hand bracing at the base of his cock, and Waver comes, and comes, and comes, spilling everything he has over the slick drag of that tongue against him. His mouth is open, his breath is ragged, his arms are shaking; it’s only after he can feel his release aching in his balls in Iskandar’s grip and his cock easing to the soft weight of satisfaction that he remembers how to breathe, and a long span of slow breaths after that that Iskandar tightens the press of his lips and draws away, sucking Waver clean as he goes. Waver shudders with the pull against him, his cock twitching with a last spurt of heat, but Iskandar just presses his tongue against the wet at his cockhead to lick him clean before he draws back to swallow with focused intent.

“There,” he says, sounding as content as if it were his own orgasm spilled between them instead of Waver’s. He lifts his hand from between the other’s legs to return his grip to Waver’s hips instead, although his hold is more gentle reassurance than anything else. “Feel better now, princeling?”

Waver presses his lips together. He can’t deny the relief that is spilling into his veins to fill his body with a languor like he’s never felt before, the familiar satisfaction of orgasm granted space and meaning by the addition of Iskandar’s touch; but neither can he deny the ache still in him, at the back of his thoughts if not in the slack relief of his body, that part of him that is still urging for his partner’s own pleasure, that is begging for the weight of Iskandar over, atop, in him before it will be soothed. “Will you deign to teach me _now_?”

Iskandar’s expression breaks into a laugh, the lines of his face creasing into delight too immediate and keen to be feigned. “Indeed,” he says. “You have been quite patient with me.” He braces a hand at the edge of the bed and pushes himself to his feet; for a moment Waver’s shoulders tense with the awareness of the difference between them, of the breadth of Iskandar’s shoulders and the strength in his chest and flexing against his thighs, but Iskandar doesn’t come in to lean over him, doesn’t reach out to pin Waver to the bed and push his knees into the space between the other’s. He moves away instead, striding across the room until it’s only logic that keeps Waver from panicking outright. Even then it’s enough to urge him onto his elbows and sitting up on the bed, aware even as he moves that his arms are weak and trembling with the effort but too anxious to keep from acting to at least keep his gaze on Iskandar even if he doesn’t trust the support of his legs to let him follow. Iskandar isn’t moving towards the door, at least -- a minor comfort for Waver’s racing heart -- but to the chest of drawers at one side of the room instead, to pull them open and rifle through their contents with the easy comfort of a man certain in his possession of this room and everything in it.

“What are you doing?” Waver asks, more for the sake of saying something than because he really is terribly curious.

“Looking for oil,” Iskandar answers at once and without turning around. “You’ll need something to ease the friction.”

Waver frowns. “Wasn’t that what all this was just about?”

Iskandar’s laugh is low and warm enough that Waver feels it as more comfort against the length of his spine than any kind of mockery. “That was part of it,” Iskandar agrees. “To keep you from tensing up as much as you might. That was for your mind.” He emerges from one of the drawers with a small bottle clasped in one hand before he pushes the drawer shut with careless ease. “Your body still needs preparation too.”

Waver drags himself through a heavy sigh. It would have been frustration, before, but with the effect of Iskandar’s touch still glowing heat through the whole of his body he can’t really attain much more than mild irritation at the moment. “Does it always take this long?”

Iskandar rumbles over a laugh as he returns to the end of the bed and drops the bottle to the sheets alongside Waver’s hip. “What need is there for haste?” he asks. “The pursuit of physical pleasure is something to be savoured as much as a rich banquet or the glory of conquest.” He reaches for Waver’s knees and catches his hold under them; when he lifts and pushes back Waver slides over the bed, toppling back to lie flat over the sheets again as Iskandar braces a knee at the end of the mattress so he can lean in towards him. “We have the full of the night to appreciate this. Your first experience of sex is something to be lingered over rather than hurried.”

Waver’s face reddens but it’s not as if he can deny this patently true claim. “It’s not _your_ first time.”

“It is my first time with you,” Iskandar says, and Waver’s voice leaves him entirely with the even sincerity of that statement. Iskandar looks down to reach for the bottle and draw the stopper free so he can turn it over and drip oil across the span of his fingers and the palm of his hand; Waver watches the shine of it, his dizzy attention lingering in the glow of light against the wet until he thinks of what Iskandar is going to do with those slick fingers, until he thinks of where Iskandar will be pressing that touch, and he has to drop his head back and shut his eyes against the flare of self-consciousness in him.

Iskandar’s hand against the inside of Waver’s knee isn’t a surprise -- Waver has been tingling with self-conscious expectation of such for minutes -- but it still tightens Waver’s thigh on anticipation and nerves in about equal parts. Iskandar hums in the back of his throat, a low wordless note before his palm slides in to cradle Waver’s open leg to stillness.

“Relax,” he says, a command and not a request, and Waver relaxes before he can think, his whole body going slack under the force of Iskandar’s attention. Fingers press wet against him, the slick of the oil warm between Iskandar’s skin and his own, and he shudders for a moment before his spent body gives way to surrender once more. Iskandar’s touch slides against him, the weight of the other’s fingerprints drawing over Waver’s skin with such calm certainty that even the intimacy of contact where Waver has never before been touched by another isn’t enough to tense him onto adrenaline. He thinks it might be, if they had begun like this; but the satisfaction of his orgasm is still weighting him to the bed, and it’s hard to muster the strength to be very nervous about anything at all as he is. It’s just Iskandar, as he has been all this time, his hold steady and his fingers certain, until even when his touch presses against Waver’s entrance -- even as his fingertip slides up to penetrate Waver’s body -- it all feels like part of the same moment, the same long heat that Iskandar has been urging into him since he drew Waver’s clothes from his body.

“Good,” Iskandar hums now, approval as radiant in his throat as the strain of his touch is against Waver’s entrance. “Just like that, princeling.” There’s pressure, motion, friction dragging itself into Waver as Iskandar shifts and pushes; Waver loses his breath for a moment, gasping over an inhale as he tenses in spite of his best efforts to the contrary, but Iskandar keeps moving all the same, pulling back before urging up and in. It’s a strange sensation, heat and pressure that are more odd than pleasant; Waver feels the force working into him like it’s pushing him open, making space inside him from the ease Iskandar urged into his muscles beforehand. His face is flushing, his skin burning to heat in flickering waves; Waver frowns at the ceiling, struggling over a breath as his shoulders tense in spite of himself, but Iskandar’s palm is still bracing his knee wide, and the motion of the other’s touch is starting to fall into a rhythm, something slow and easy but as unmistakable as the pounding of Waver’s heart in his chest. Waver focuses in on that rhythm, on falling into time with the urging of Iskandar’s finger pushing up into him and sliding back to take another long stroke.

“You’re doing very well,” Iskandar says, speaking without easing the pace of his motion. “You consistently prove yourself a fast learner.”

“That’s a great comfort,” Waver says. He’s aiming for an edge on the words but Iskandar just laughs as if he’s made a grand joke, and he can’t steady himself enough to make a better attempt. His heart is pounding faster than it ought to be; he feels strained, stretched, as vulnerable as if Iskandar is mapping out parts of him that he has hardly acknowledged in himself. A part of him wants to protest, instinct rising up to demand to be freed from the press inside him and the uncomfortable friction working in against the strain of his entrance; a greater part of him is aching with curiosity, with desire to know what will happen if he continues, if he lets Iskandar go forward towards his intended goal. He presses his lips together and swallows hard to steady himself as much as he can before he reaches for speech. “Are you ready to move on, then?”

“There is no need for haste,” Iskandar tells him, and draws his finger back out of Waver entirely. “You’re doing well already.”

Waver groans. “Is that a no?” He lifts his head from under his arm to scowl down at Iskandar at the end of the bed. “How much longer will this take?”

“Always so impatient,” Iskandar says, with more affection than judgment on his tone. “You have the greed of a king in you, princeling.”

“What?” Waver says. “I’m not _greedy_ ” but Iskandar’s touch is urging against him again, two fingers together now instead of just the one, and he can’t find the attention to truly engage with the conversation. He tenses against the pressure, the reaction instinct more than intent, and then he gusts an exhale and Iskandar’s fingers push up and into him in a slow stroke that Waver can feel aching all the way down in the lowest point of his belly.

“You are,” Iskandar says. His tone is certain, as unwavering as his fingers, and Waver can’t answer for the pressure within him, pushing strain into his body until he feels like he must protest before pressure turns to pain, before the uncomfortable fullness takes on the edge of agony as it urges up into him. But Iskandar’s grip on his hip is steady, his movements as sure as any Waver has ever seen from him, and Waver has spent the last weeks trusting that confidence absolutely, even when his own gives way. So he gusts an exhale, and relaxes as much as he can, and Iskandar keeps pushing into him, finding allowance for himself that Waver hadn’t even thought he had to give. “You’re impatient for everything right now, for all you can stomach and much you cannot.” His fingers draw back by a breath, easing enough to let Waver struggle for an inhale before they thrust back up to fill that same space left empty by their retreat. “You hunger for respect and control and perfection in all you do, until even the necessity of practice is an agony for you.”

“Shut up,” Waver tries, although the command is stripped of some measure of its power by the whimper on his voice. His leg is trembling under Iskandar’s hand on his thigh; there’s a dull pressure deep within him, like Iskandar’s fingers are seeking out some part of him that might break at a touch. “That’s not...I don’t.”

“You do,” Iskandar says, his voice as inexorable as his touch. His fingers are moving more easily now, having once sheathed themselves within the heat of Waver’s body; he’s stroking his way to a rhythm, his paired fingers working into Waver with steady speed until the lines between draw and thrust are blurring, until it all begins to soften into a single complete experience. Waver is staring at the ceiling without really seeing it, his lips parted on his breathing and his voice absent from the strain in his chest; that pressure is building in him, forming itself to a weight somehow deeper and more solid than the first aching near-pain that came with the initial thrust of Iskandar’s touch into him. It’s like that knot of pleasure he felt before, with Iskandar’s mouth sliding over him to work his orgasm free of the strain of his body, but deeper, darker, forming itself from the dull edges of pressure that Waver’s never felt before. His leg flexes in spite of himself, urging against Iskandar’s hold as if to pull himself closer; Iskandar pushes against his knee and angles his fingers apart until Waver groans with the strain of it, surprised by his own resilience even as that ache goes on growing without satisfaction.

“I,” Waver starts, but he’s lost the thread of the conversation, his thoughts are wandering down hazy paths of a desperation he can’t even fit into the shape of want for how strange and foreign it is. His face feels hot, his body feels tense; he can’t stop the strain in his thigh against Iskandar’s hold, any attempt at relaxation is undone by the next thrust of the other’s fingers into him. His hand catches into his hair and forms to a fist, pulling against the strands until Waver’s not sure if he’s trying to steady his grip or pin himself down to the bed. “Iskandar.”

“Mm,” Iskandar hums, the note as warm and reassuring as if Waver had asked a coherent question. “Yes.” His fingers slide back and stroke forward, one long push that urges the air free of Waver’s lungs in a huff, before he pulls back at once, moving so quickly Waver doesn’t have time to protest before Iskandar’s fingers are out of him and Iskandar’s hand is lifting from his leg.

Waver lifts his head from the bed, trying to bring his vision into clarity as his body aches with protest at the loss of that too-much pressure, tension turning traitor now to leave him open and pained with the absence of what he thought he could hardly bear. “Iskandar?”

“Stay there,” Iskandar says. He’s pushing away from the end of the bed to stand at the foot of it; his attention is turned down to the belt around his waist as his fingers make quick work of the clasp. “I only require a moment.” The belt comes free, followed very shortly by Iskandar’s pants; he lets them fall to the floor and steps free of them as quickly as he reaches to lift the bottom edge of his shirt to bare the expanse of his chest. There’s a ripple of muscle under his skin, the shift of it like a wave as his arms move to tug free the last of his clothing, but Waver’s attention has dropped along with the fall of Iskandar’s pants and he can’t seem to raise it. Iskandar is flushed with desire, his cock standing out to full hardness from the line of his hips; Waver’s attention draws against the span of it, the thick heat of the shaft, the dark flush at the swollen head, the thatch of scarlet hair at the base and coming down to the tops of Iskandar’s thighs, where his balls are hanging heavy just under his full length. The heat in Waver’s stomach knots tighter, cinching in on itself as he stares, as his imagination invents pressure, heat, friction while his body tightens helplessly on the absence of all three, and then Iskandar is emerging from his shirt, and casting it to the floor, and Waver’s gaze jumps back up to Iskandar’s face. The other is smiling, broad and warm as he looks down at Waver, and the expression doesn’t flicker as he steps in closer, showing not the least self-consciousness at his present state of undress.

“Hungry again,” Iskandar purrs, offering the words with the weight of a statement instead of the upswing of a question. One hand comes down to brace against the bed alongside Waver’s waist; the other drops to the space between them, where Iskandar’s shadow is falling against the rising heat of Waver’s slow-renewing arousal. Waver’s thighs tense at the touch of Iskandar’s fingers against him, his breath rushes from him; his hand comes out to clutch at Iskandar’s hair without thought, to fist at the brilliant strands as the closest thing to a fixed point he has against the drag of those fingers sliding up over him. “Your appetite is commendable, princeling.” His hand drops from tracing against Waver’s length, catching at the inside of the other’s knee to hitch his thighs to a wider angle before he turns his head down entirely to fix his attention on that shadowy anticipation Waver can feel building nearly to panic in him. “I believe I can sate it all the same.”

Waver’s fingers work in Iskandar’s hair, stroking through the locks as much in pursuit of stability as in an expression of affection. His throat is knotting, his breathing hitching, but Iskandar’s hips are already between his thighs, Iskandar’s hand is steady at the base of his cock. Everything is moving too fast, there’s not time to realize what is happening, what is about to happen; Waver feels like he’s toppling headlong over a ledge, time speeding past him before he has a chance to grab at it. He wants to memorize this moment, to linger in the reality of this breath, this heartbeat of Iskandar leaning over him, of his heart pounding on expectation, but Iskandar’s thighs are working, and Iskandar’s cock is pressing against him, and Waver can’t find air to speak at all. Iskandar’s fingers shift, drawing up over himself to press oil in against the flushed head of his cock, and then he’s in place, his grip tightening at the base of his length and his body taut over Waver’s and the breadth of his hips urging Waver’s thighs apart. Waver can’t breathe, can’t think, can’t even move except to tremble with strain, and then Iskandar lifts his gaze from between them and up to meet his eyes.

“Waver,” he says, his voice so gentle it takes Waver a moment to make sense of the word itself, of that name so rarely shaped at Iskandar’s lips. His smile is gone, now, softened into the dark weight of anticipation, but his eyes are warm enough for a thousand smiles as they offer Waver their full attention. “Are you ready?”

Waver could say anything. He asked for this, it was he who urged Iskandar to this room and to this moment; Iskandar has spent the last span of tension-strained time urging Waver into pleasure and working him open in preparation for exactly this result. But there is no expectation in Iskandar’s eyes, no pressure under his voice; even with the solid heat of his cock urging against Waver’s entrance, Waver is sure he could refuse, could so much as shake his head and Iskandar would pull away without even a flicker of judgment. The idea is dizzying, as if the awareness of his own power is enough to throw Waver into an endless, blind fall, but when he moves it’s to lift his other hand to clutch at Iskandar’s hair, until he has his fingers twisted far into the crimson to steady himself and can take a breath to fill his aching chest.

“Yes,” Waver says; and Iskandar thrusts forward, his cock urging up against Waver’s body at once. There’s a surge of tension, strain radiating out into Waver’s hips, thighs, belly, as reflex resists for the first moment; but Iskandar’s fingers were thorough, and Waver gusts an exhale, and when Iskandar’s thighs strain for another push the head of his cock breaches the slick strain of Waver’s entrance. Waver struggles for a breath, his spine tensing with self-consciousness of Iskandar inside him, of Iskandar with him as a single unified whole, but Iskandar is still moving, rocking his hips with rhythmic force, and his cock slides farther with each motion, settling deeper into Waver’s body with each thrust. Iskandar urges forward with the same absolute certainty he shows for combat, for conquest, for dominance, taking and asking at one and the same time, and Waver gives what he never knew he had to give, wider than Iskandar’s fingers, deeper than Iskandar’s touch, until the strain of Iskandar’s length seems to fill the whole of his existence, until he can feel the heat of the other’s desire striving up through the center of his body to pin them together. He’s pulling at Iskandar’s hair without thinking, both hands dragging at the other’s head as if to urge the weight of the other man down atop him, but when Iskandar tips forward it’s gentle, the span of his chest pressing and pinning Waver down to offer protection instead of force. Iskandar’s forehead touches the pillow alongside Waver’s head, his hand catches at Waver’s hip, and it’s only as his movement steadies and stills that Waver realizes they are fully coupled, that the whole of Iskandar’s length is sheathed within the trembling strain of his body. The thought seizes at his chest and twitches a quiver of heat through his cock, but before he can speak Iskandar turns his head, his beard dragging in against Waver’s shoulder with the movement of the other’s body.

“Waver,” Iskandar says. His voice feels lower from this close up; Waver can feel the vibration of it course through his chest as if to overtake the rhythm of his heartbeat and set it to a new course. “Are you well?”

Waver can’t speak; he doesn’t trust his throat, doesn’t trust the shiver running through his chest. He nods instead, ducking his head forward against Iskandar’s shoulder with as much certainty as he can give when he can hardly find his voice, and that seems to be enough, judging from the gust of an exhale Iskandar spends against his neck.

“Very well,” he says. His hand settles closer at Waver’s hip to press his fingers into steadying force; his mouth draws against Waver’s neck to press a brief kiss against the other’s skin. “Don’t forget to breathe.” And then his thighs flex, his hips draw back, and Waver’s hand in Iskandar’s hair falls loose as he clutches hard against the other’s neck, clinging to the support of broad shoulders to steady himself against the force of Iskandar moving up and into him.

It’s the feeling of being overrun. If Waver thinks he can parse the details of his own body -- the part of his lips, the strain of his fingers, the ache at the inside of his thighs -- but mostly he feels Iskandar, pressing atop him and thrusting within him until even the strain of Waver’s body begins to urge towards pleasure, recasts itself into just another part of the dull pressure fisting itself to a weight deep in his belly, knotting tighter around the motion of Iskandar’s length stroking inside him. Waver’s arm is looped around Iskandar’s neck, his fingers are clinging to the other’s hair; he has one leg up, he thinks, his heel catching against the solid strength at the dip of Iskandar’s back, but his movements aren’t his own, they’re guided into instinctive response to every thrust of Iskandar’s hips and every sliding pull of his cock. Waver is aching, his whole body throbbing with the dull almost-pleasant hurt as of a bruise, but it radiates out from his very core, as if the relief of finally gaining this long-desired intimacy is more than his body can possibly bear. And over him: Iskandar is moving, the proven strength of his body turned now towards a purpose far gentler than the pursuit of war as he sets himself to conquering the tension of Waver’s body, to claiming the surrender of the other’s pleasure for his own.

Iskandar’s breathing is deep and hot against Waver’s neck, gusting across the other’s skin with humid force under every exhale he offers, and when he breathes in the action carries all his habitual focus with it, as if he’s filling his lungs with Waver’s presence, as if it is the taste of the other’s skin as much as the pressure of his body that is urging his arousal to greater heights of pleasure. The thought makes Waver feel light-headed, as dizzy as if he’s drunk too deeply of Iskandar’s wine, but it’s sensation in him now, building friction that is stealing his breath and blurring his gaze. He aches, his whole body straining over too-much pressure, over a tension more intense than directly pleasurable; and yet that weight in his belly is growing, building towards what is beginning to feel like a peak, an edge that Waver can’t hope to see over. His heart is racing with arousal, with adrenaline, with the beginnings of fear as that pressure builds to a point he can hardly bear; but Iskandar’s shoulders are tipped over him, and Iskandar’s hand is against his hip, and Waver has never been able to offer anything but trust in answer to that.

“Iskandar,” he manages now, wrenching the word free from his lips by virtue of his grip at Iskandar’s hair and the strain of his thigh around the other’s hip. “I’m--it’s too much.”

Iskandar presses in against Waver’s throat, his nose dipping against the soft space behind the other’s ear while his lips part on a breath over Waver’s pulse. His beard catches to drag prickling sensation against the curve of Waver’s neck. “Do I hurt you, princeling?”

Waver shakes his head. “No,” he admits. “It’s not hurt. It’s...too much.”

“A pressure?” Iskandar asks. His hand slides away from Waver’s hip and up to span the dip of the other’s abdomen; when his fingers shift his knuckles brush the head of Waver’s cock, straining now on full heat towards his belly. “Here?” Waver presses his face against Iskandar’s shoulder, his cheeks burning into self-consciousness in spite of himself. Iskandar gusts a breath against his neck, the sound of it low and rumbling deep enough that Waver can feel it ache in his cock even without the contact of Iskandar’s hand against him.

“You can bear it,” Iskandar tells him. “Don’t fight it. Just let it come.” He rocks his weight forward to brace himself against Waver for a moment as he draws a knee up higher against the underside of the other’s open thigh; when he moves again it’s with steadier force, firm enough that Waver can feel himself held still even before Iskandar’s hand at his stomach slides down towards the ache of his cock. Waver knows what’s coming, then, can map it from the draw of Iskandar’s fingers moving towards his hips, but even then the friction closing against his length sends a spasm of heat through his thighs and tightens the whole of his body where he’s held open under the weight of Iskandar’s. He’d arch himself off the sheets outright, he thinks, if he were alone; as it is the force of his reaction spends itself against the press of Iskandar’s chest, and the width of Iskandar’s hips, and the movement inside him continues, stoking the heat building to a flame within him as Iskandar’s grip steadies to pull in counterpoint.

“Breathe,” Iskandar says, his voice like a touch, like his lips are drawing down the whole length of Waver’s spine along his back. He’s moving faster, Waver thinks; or maybe it’s his own attention that is giving way, that is losing track of time as quickly as Iskandar moves over him. His legs are trembling against Iskandar’s hips, his arm shaking against the other’s neck; when his grip slides free of Iskandar’s hair Waver clutches at his back instead, digging in hard with his fingertips to purchase traction for himself from the span of solid muscle over him. He can’t steady himself, can’t tie himself down against the strain rising in him; but it keeps coming anyway, building with inexorable certainty along the base of his spine and up, tightening in his balls and knotting in his stomach and clenching his fingers to fists. Waver’s eyes are shut, his head is turned in to press to Iskandar’s shoulder, and at his ear Iskandar is still murmuring, commands made of affection as much as need, _breathe_ and _relax_ and _princeling_ , teasing turned endearment by the heat in his throat. Waver is gasping, panting for air in obedience to Iskandar’s orders even as his body trembles like he’s coming apart, as if he’s going to break, and it’s then, in that moment of pristine anticipation, that Iskandar drives forward to press himself deep into Waver’s body.

Waver can feel the friction of it, the pressure urging in against some shadowy, untouched part of him; and the strain gives way, the pressure unfolding like a flower surging into bloom at once. His throat tightens, his chest flexes, and it’s only in the echo in his ears that he realizes he shouted Iskandar’s name in a voice he didn’t know he had, low and hot and wanting. His cock jerks in Iskandar’s hold, pulsing with a spill of heat as much again as what he offered up before, but it’s his whole body that is drawn into the strain, this time, as Waver gasps and shudders and trembles under and around Iskandar’s body. The pleasure goes on forever, it stretches and surges around him as inevitably as Iskandar himself, until it’s only in the white-haze glow of heavy-limbed surrender that Waver feels the strain in Iskandar too, that he makes sense of the speed of the other’s movement over him.

“Iskandar,” Waver says, meaning to make it a question, but the syllables come out a moan, broken apart on the force of the other’s motion, and Iskandar groans dark at the side of Waver’s neck.

“Wonderful,” he says, spilling the words like heat of his own at Waver’s skin, and he lets the other’s cock go to reach for his hip instead, to press his hand down against the curve of Waver’s ass and hitch him up closer. Waver groans with the angle and clutches at Iskandar’s shoulder to hold himself steady against the drive of the other’s cock, but Iskandar is moving with certainty, now, as unhesitating as an oncoming storm. “You’re wonderful, my princeling.” His beard shifts at Waver’s neck, dragging the burn of heat over Waver’s already flushed skin, and Waver’s head angles to the side in unasked surrender to make an offering of this as well, of whatever Iskandar might want of him. Iskandar’s fingers tighten against him, Iskandar’s breath hitches at his skin, and finally: “ _Waver_ ” Iskandar groans, his voice breaking over its lowest range, and Waver is urged back over the bed by an inch as Iskandar bucks forward to press them impossibly near before spending himself within the other. His release comes in waves, his hips rocking forward with instinctive grace as he fills the other with the heat of his pleasure; until finally Iskandar groans an endless sigh into Waver’s neck, and lets himself collapse into heavy comfort atop Waver beneath him.

They stay like that for a span of breaths. Waver’s entire body is aching on strain and too-much tension and the quivering aftereffects of pleasure; for the first few seconds he can’t even find the breath to protest Iskandar’s weight pinning him down and crushing the breath from his lungs. Finally he extricates his fingers from the hold he has in Iskandar’s hair and frees his arm enough to push against the weight of the other’s shoulder with enough force to get his partner’s attention if not to actually dislodge him.

“Get off,” Waver manages. “I can’t breathe under you.”

Iskandar rumbles a laugh against the side of his neck. “My apologies, princeling,” he says, and shifts up to take some of his weight on his elbow instead. “It was not my intention to crush you.” He rolls to the side across the bed, his movement heavy and languid with his spent pleasure, but as he pulls away his arm catches around Waver’s back to urge the other with him and keep them pressed close together still. Waver grabs for the support of Iskandar’s shoulders to steady himself as they settle again, and against his ear Iskandar gusts a satisfied exhale.

“I have been thinking of you like this for long weeks now,” he says. “It is good to finally have what has so long been a fantasy.”

Waver can feel his face flush into self-consciousness, adopting a pink even all the distraction of satisfaction can’t avoid; but he _is_ satisfied, so heavy and full with it that it’s an ache in the whole of his body, and he lacks the will to push himself away and take cover in isolation. He ducks his head to press into Iskandar’s shoulder instead, tipping forward so his hair falls into his face and when he speaks the words come out muffled against the span of the other man’s chest. “I suppose it’s never as satisfying in reality as in the imagining.”

Fingers touch his hair, a hand presses down to urge the strands to smoothness against the back of Waver’s head. “You have it backwards,” Iskandar says. “All the dreams in the world are never as rich as the truth of experience.” His hand comes down to settle at Waver’s jaw and press against the line of it; Waver’s head tips up, urged out of the shadow of Iskandar’s shoulder and into the flickering illumination in the room. Iskandar is looking down at him, his head ducked forward and his gaze trailing over Waver’s features; there’s a smile at his lips as soft and warm as his touch, but it’s his eyes that hold Waver’s attention, as the dark clarity of his gaze meets and lingers on Waver’s face.

“What do you think?” Iskandar asks, his voice very low and so soft it’s almost a whisper, almost a sensation more than a sound. “Would you prefer to go back to your dreams, my princeling?”

Waver’s mouth sets, his jaw tightens. He can’t speak, doesn’t trust his voice; he shakes his head instead, the motion sharp and certain. Iskandar’s smile widens to spread out across his face, and Waver lifts his hand to push his fingers into the other’s hair and brace him still so he can arch in and lay claim to the curve of Iskandar’s smile against his own lips.

Iskandar’s hold on Waver’s back is unflinching, but his mouth is soft as surrender against the press of Waver’s own.


	32. Bound

Waver doesn’t sleep well that night.

It’s not the fault of the bed. The mattress is wide and deep, far softer than the bedrolls they’ve all been sleeping on for the last weeks of travel; with the pressure of looming combat finally spent into the satisfaction of victory, there is nothing to shadow Waver’s dreams out of whatever brightness they wish to wander. Even the sound of Iskandar’s snoring next to him is more a comfort than otherwise: Waver has spent the last weeks too often lying awake in his bedroll, surrounded by the murmur of sleeping existences too many and too quiet to offer the comfort of the one he wished for, and the return of the rumble of Iskandar’s presence is such a relief it’s nearly enough to bring tears to his eyes. But his body is aching, heavy with exhaustion and flushed with afterglow, and as the languid hum of pleasure gives way to the dull near-pain of the friction within him Waver finds himself gazing at the far side of the darkened bedchamber, his thoughts dizzy and hazy with exhaustion but his heart still beating too hard to let him slip into rest. Exhaustion stages an attack on him in waves, surging up to tug him into brief fragments of dreams or imagination  impossible to tell apart; but he startles awake almost as soon as he falls into sleep, jolting with force enough that he’s surprised when it’s not enough to stir Iskandar’s hold on him. It’s only with the murmur of early-morning servants in the hall outside that exhaustion finally manages to take the field and draw Waver down into some kind of rest, and even then his dreams are shadowed, tense and strange and aching as much in the span of his chest as at that distant pain within him. He frowns through a span of hours, stirring and fighting against his own exhaustion holding him down to sleep, until when he finally surfaces he can feel the ache in him even before he opens his eyes to admit to his own consciousness.

The bed is empty, he finds when he turns to reach out across the vast span of the blankets. The sheets remain rumpled, tangled on themselves with clarity enough to speak to the presence that kept Waver company through so much of his restless night, but Iskandar is nowhere within them any more than he is in what of the room Waver can see. Waver pushes himself to sit upright amidst the sheets around him, bracing one hand behind him while he lifts the other to push an attempt at restraint through his hair and considers the space of the room with bleary attention. He’s just turning to contemplate the edge of the bed and to wonder where his clothes landed and how hard it would be to dress himself again when a door at the far side of the room comes open and Iskandar’s booming voice spills out to fill the whole of the bedchamber.

“Princeling!” Waver looks to answer that voice, his reaction too immediate for him to think of restraining the reflex, but Iskandar is only just stepping through the doorway, ducking down to keep his head clear of the arch as he enters the bedchamber. His head is tipped forward, his face hidden beneath the weight of the towel he’s presently ruffling through his hair; the motion draws Waver’s gaze for a moment, keeps his attention following the shift of Iskandar’s hands against the white rather than sliding down over the rest of the other’s body. “At last you rise!” Iskandar lifts his head as he pushes the towel back and off his head to fall over a bare shoulder and turns the flash of his smile on Waver sitting up in the bed. “I thought you meant to sleep the whole of the day away and let the promise of dinner rouse you from your rest.”

Waver frowns at him. “I didn’t sleep well,” he says, his voice creaking towards petulance without his intention, but it only lasts for a minute. His gaze is sliding down, following the line of the towel over Iskandar’s shoulder and along the smooth tan of his skin, and irritation is entirely eclipsed by the shock that catches his throat on a gasp and burns scarlet across his cheeks before he can turn aside. “You’re not _wearing_ anything.”

“Hm?” Waver can see Iskandar’s head shift in his periphery, the movement of the other’s gaze dropping telegraphed by the weight of his brilliant hair rumpled up over his head before he rumbles a laugh as if only just noticing the reality of his nakedness. “Of course, I have just come from bathing.”

Waver cuts his gaze sideways, glancing at Iskandar through the weight of his hair and trying to keep his attention on the other’s face instead of dropping to the heavy weight of his flaccid cock hanging between his thighs. “And you didn’t think of _decency_ when you returned?”

Iskandar hums in the back of his throat and lifts his head to make some show of looking around the room. “Is there an audience here I don’t see, princeling?”

Waver whimpers. “There’s _me_.”

“Indeed,” Iskandar says, and comes forward from the doorway to cross the span of the room towards the bed. “As I recall you have more intimate knowledge of me than anything gazing is likely to grant you. I determined a show of maidenly shyness was unnecessary.” He drops the towel at his shoulder to the floor and steps forward to brace his knee at the edge of the bed; the mattress dips with his weight and tips Waver to the side before he can lean away and catch himself, but Iskandar’s leaning in towards him in any case to brace his hand behind Waver’s hips and duck over the other’s shoulder. “Do you need a reminder of this latest experience, my princeling?”

“No,” Waver says, choking over the word as his face burns to a red all the shadow his hair can grant can’t save him from. He ducks forward in any case, turning his head away as his shoulders hunch as if to make a wall around the giveaway embarrassment in his face. “I’m unlikely to forget any of it so long as I hurt like I do.”

“Ah,” Iskandar breathes, his tone dropping from amused heat into sympathy. “I am afraid that is part of it, the first time.” He reaches out to lay his hand against Waver’s hip; when his fingers tighten Waver can feel the comfort of the pressure run right up the length of his spine. “It will be better the next time.”

Waver presses his lips together and swallows. His face is still burning, his shoulders are still tense on self-consciousness, but Iskandar is so near he can feel the rustle of the other’s breathing against the loose of his hair, and the weight of the touch at his hip is reminding his body of the slide of friction over him, is humming the warmth of memory through his limbs and pooling it in the lowest point of his belly. Waver tips his head to the side, angling towards Iskandar so near him without quite lifting his face up to the light. “Will there be a next time?”

Iskandar hums a note in the back of his throat that comes out sounding like a purr. When he leans in closer his nose bumps the fall of Waver’s hair in front of his face. “I certainly intend for there to be.”

Waver lets a breath go, not even minding how ragged it sounds at his lips. “Iskandar,” he says, just the name with no further meaning to add clarity; but it doesn’t matter anyway, because he’s turning his head and lifting his hand, and Iskandar is tipping his head to the side to capture Waver’s mouth with his own even before Waver’s fingers come up to settle into the damp weight of the other’s hair. Iskandar’s jaw shifts, his mouth opens, and Waver parts his lips in immediate surrender to make an invitation for the hot press of Iskandar’s tongue in and against his. Iskandar takes this offer with all the regal grace he has available to him, and when the weight of his hand lifts from Waver’s hip to press between the line of the other’s shoulderblades Waver tips back with as much elegance, lifting his arms to wind around Iskandar’s neck to steady himself as Iskandar leans in to lower him to the tangle of the sheets beneath them. Iskandar’s knee presses alongside Waver’s thigh, pinning the layer of fabric between them, but he’s reaching for that too, drawing his bracing hand away from Waver’s back to slide around the other’s waist and pull the cloth clear of his hips. Waver rocks up to ease Iskandar’s efforts, feeling his face heat with distant self-consciousness as Iskandar lays him bare for the press of a hand against his thigh and the shadow of the other’s body over him; but more than that he’s glowing with heat everywhere Iskandar touches him, and the casual intimacy of the palm dragging up over his hip is promising satisfaction for the ache of desire flushing Waver’s cock to stand out hard from the angle of his hips.

“Was it want that disturbed your rest?” Iskandar suggests as he gives up his slow exploration of Waver’s mouth to leave the other free to pant for breaths of air that ache like fire in his chest. Iskandar’s touch comes in over his hip, tracing out the line of taut skin before his fingertips seek out the base of Waver’s cock and follow the curve of it up the whole length to the dark-flushed head. Waver shudders with the friction, his hips bucking up into desperate encouragement, but Iskandar’s touch is more gentle than intent, like he’s laying the shape of Waver’s desire to memory under the slide of his fingers. “You should have woken me. I would have been happy to give over dreaming for the sake of sating your need.”

Waver shakes his head. “That’s not it,” he attempts, but the force of his protest is undermined by the motion of his cock twitching with heat under Iskandar’s touch and the strain in his thighs as his body tries to buck up against the other’s palm. His leg flexes, his foot catches against the far side of Iskandar’s calf as if to brace the other alongside him; when Waver’s arms strain it’s enough to bring his shoulders up off the bed and work against the distance between himself and Iskandar over him. “I was fine, last night.”

“It is the waking that has left you so desperate?” Iskandar suggests, but there’s more heat than teasing on his tone, and when he moves to pull free of Waver’s leg atop his it’s only to fit his knee into the gap between the other’s legs so he can shift his weight in over Waver properly. Waver spreads his legs apart at once, his heart skipping faster even as his body throbs distant protest to the idea of more friction against the lingering ache of the night before; even at the distance of a full night, the memory of Iskander stroking into him is enough to flush his cheeks and jerk his cock towards his stomach with a rush of heat he can’t so much as think to restrain.

“Iskandar,” Waver says, hardly caring about the way his voice quavers in his throat as Iskandar’s thighs fit between his own and Iskandar’s weight comes forward to spread him open against the bed. “Are you--can we?”

Iskandar shakes his head. “Not so soon,” he tells Waver, and the rejection ought to be a chill to the ache in Waver’s body but Iskandar’s voice is so low Waver can’t find anything but heat to answer it, and with the tan of Iskandar’s skin fitting close against the pale of his own body it’s hard to feel even the refusal as the negative it is in truth. “It would be more pain than pleasure for you and I would not be the cause of your suffering.” He smiles, the expression wide and brilliant as he looks down at Waver beneath him. “So long as you are share my bed, princeling, sex will be an indulgence to be enjoyed, not a burden to be borne.” Iskandar ducks in over Waver, closing the distance between them to press his mouth against Waver’s lips, and Waver finds his eyes closing, can feel himself going slack and pliant just to the weight of Iskandar’s mouth. Iskandar’s hand slides away from its exploration of his length, returning to his hip to brace him steady before the other lowers his weight to settle his hips into the space between Waver’s open thighs. The pressure pushes Waver’s legs apart, straining his thighs open until he hisses with the beginning of the ache against the muscle, but the pull there is no more than a flicker across his attention, because Iskandar’s hips are pressing against Waver’s own, and in the first moment there’s nothing that can hold Waver’s focus to anything other than the solid weight of Iskandar’s full-flushed cock settling in alongside the curve of his own.

Iskandar breathes out against the part of Waver’s lips, the action carrying force enough that Waver can feel the heat of satisfaction just from the hum of vibration at his mouth. “But I have no intention of leaving either of us unsatisfied, on this or any other day.” Iskandar turns his head to press his lips in against the line of Waver’s jaw, drawing the heat of his kiss down into gentle contact against the other’s skin, and Waver turns his head to surrender to the fit of the other’s mouth. Iskandar’s beard drags against the underside of his chin and scratches gentle friction over the side of his neck, but the other’s lips are warm as they press tender affection into Waver’s skin until Waver’s flush is glowing through him with the radiance of pleasure instead of the harsh edge of embarrassment. His arms tighten around Iskandar’s neck, his hips rock up with unselfconscious instinct, and against the side of his neck Iskandar purrs over a laugh so low and warm that Waver can feel the force of it tighten like a weight in the depths of his belly. Iskandar shifts his weight over Waver, bracing himself against an elbow at the give of the bed below the other without giving up any part of the press of his body against Waver’s; his hold at Waver’s hip tightens, pinning the other to stillness against the sheets. Iskandar’s thighs flex, Waver can feel the strength of the other’s muscles straining against his own open legs, and when the other’s hips come forward it’s to grind in against Waver beneath him, to urge the solid heat of Iskandar’s cock to ride up against the line of Waver’s hip as the force of the other’s body bears down on Waver’s own length. Waver shudders with the friction, his knees tightening around Iskandar’s hips and his fingers curling into fists where he’s bracing himself around the other’s neck, and Iskandar hums far in the back of his throat and moves again to rock himself through another long drag of motion. Waver’s cock twitches with the force, straining up from his hips like it’s striving for more pressure, but Iskandar is flush atop him, the whole heat of the other’s presence is fixing him still where he lies, and all Waver can do is cling to Iskandar’s shoulders as his body trembles with the sensation the other is working into him.

Iskandar ducks his head down, pressing close to bury his face at the side of Waver’s neck as he heaves a sigh with force enough to sound a groan at the other’s skin. “Waver,” he rumbles, the resonance of his voice making something regal of Waver’s name, granting gilt to syllables that have never been anything but common in all Waver’s knowing. “It is good to have you under me at last.” Iskandar’s hand at Waver’s hip loosens to come up and slide over the line of the other’s thigh towards the nonexistent space between their bodies; Waver’s breath catches on anticipation but there’s nowhere he can move, even if he knew what he was leaning towards. All he can do is lie as he is, laid absolutely open for Iskandar’s appreciation, for Iskandar’s taking; and then Iskandar’s broad fingers slide in and under the curve of his cock, and Waver can’t help the whimper of heat in his throat as Iskandar’s hold steadies around him.

Iskandar rumbles another laugh. “Your appetite is commendable,” he says. His fingers settle around Waver’s cock, gentle like he’s taking the measure of the other before he shifts his weight to adjust his position and bring his own length into the span of his hold as well. His grip is broad, expansive enough to support the full weight of his preferred two-handed sword; the span of his palm braces against the whole length of Waver’s cock to hold him steady against the thick resistance of Iskandar’s own desire. The resistance is heady, just thinking of the heat of Iskandar’s arousal pressing so close at Waver’s own, but then Iskandar moves, rocking his hips back by an inch to thrust up and forward into the grip his hand is making for them both, and as Iskandar’s cock slides up to work against his own Waver moans outright, the pleasure so sharp for a moment he can’t experience it as anything other than an excess of sensation. His thighs flex, his toes curl, his fingers tighten, and against his neck Iskandar huffs a breath that pulls his lips into a smile against Waver’s shoulder.

“Yes,” he says. “Let me hear you, Waver.” And he moves again, thrusting up and against the whole shaft of Waver’s cock, and Waver’s back arches, his hips rocking up to match Iskandar’s action with a reflexive thrust of his own. His cock slides over Iskandar’s fingers, Iskandar’s length pulls and pushes over his own, and then Iskandar draws up with his hand and Waver’s awareness of what is happening gives way to the surge of pleasure that unfolds itself into his veins. He tightens his grip around Iskandar’s neck, his head tips in to lay his parted lips close against the line of Iskandar’s cheekbone, and when Iskandar next moves Waver is arching up to meet him, hips and thighs and body all flexing together to fit his actions in against the pressure of Iskandar working over him. His cock is throbbing with heat, he can feel the ache of it radiating up his spine and out into the whole of his abdomen like it’s staging an invasion on his body, but Iskandar is hard against him too, his breathing coming in deep, full gasps drawn from the give of Waver’s skin under the other’s lips. They’re moving together, moving as one, the shape of their pleasure forming itself against the strain of the other’s, until Waver can’t tell where Iskandar ends and he begins, can’t parse the distinction between Iskandar’s palm against his cock and Iskandar’s own length thrusting up in a long slide against him. It’s all heat, friction and strain and tight-knotting expectation, until he’s panting with the anticipation of release as much as with the immediacy of pleasure, his breathing finding itself from the drag of Iskandar’s at his neck. The ache inside him is distant, a source of heat with every involuntary convulsion of his body more than the distraction of pain; Waver feels dizzy, like he’s on the cusp of an orgasm he can’t quite reach, can’t find with Iskandar’s grip steering his motion to a slower, heavier pace. He needs more, he thinks, something enough to urge him over the edge; and it’s that that frees one of his hands from around Iskandar’s neck to drop down between them instead.

Waver doesn’t know what he intends. To touch himself, he thinks, maybe just to clutch at Iskandar’s wrist and force the other into a rhythm fast enough to send him over the edge into the spasm of relief he can feel just past his grip; but his movement isn’t easing, and Iskandar is still thrusting and stroking like they’re two halves of the same whole, and when Waver’s hand finds them it’s Iskandar his fingers brush first, just against the smooth heat of the other’s cock. Iskandar’s hips jerk, his breathing gusts at Waver’s shoulder, and Waver’s attention is caught just like that, pinned to the tips of his fingers as surely as his breathing is tangled in his chest. He draws his touch up, feeling along the flushed heat of Iskandar’s length as the other keeps moving against him, his thoughts dizzy with the foreign familiarity of such delicate skin taut over straining heat, with the resistance of another’s arousal under his fingers rather than his own. His touch slips up, following the length of Iskandar’s cock to the swell at the head, where the smooth length flares out before tightening to impossible softness at the tip, and against his neck Iskandar groans, over him Iskandar’s motions stutter from their rhythm for a moment. Waver’s fingers press against Iskandar’s cockhead, his thumb sliding to drag over the wet dripping at the slit; over him Iskandar’s whole body tenses and his breathing spills from him in a groan so deep Waver can feel it at the length of his spine. Waver pushes in again, repeating his first motion as much out of curiosity as intention, and Iskandar’s hips jolt forward, the strain in him spending itself in a long shudder as his cock spurts wet heat over Waver’s questing fingers. Waver’s hold tightens, his eyes open wide with surprise, but even as he’s clutching at Iskandar’s shoulders Iskandar himself is bucking up against his touch, riding out the span of his orgasm while he rumbles appreciation into Waver’s shoulder. He spills over Waver’s fingers, over Waver’s cock, dripping down to spatter wet heat over the other’s stomach and the indentation of his navel, until finally the rhythmic motion of his hips gives way, and Iskandar stills with a last shuddering sigh.

Neither of them move for a moment: Iskandar because he’s still heavy with the force of his orgasm, and Waver because his heart is racing with self-awareness, with the reality of Iskandar’s pleasure on his fingers and the absolute ownership of that same pleasure at his grip. The thought is dizzying, enough to knock Waver’s breathing down deep in his chest even as he drags it into his lungs, and then Iskandar gusts a sigh and shifts his weight to rock back onto his knees so he can draw himself away from Waver’s touch. There’s no chance of mistaking his retreat for rejection, though; he only lifts his head to turn in towards Waver, only frees the other’s shoulder so he can lay claim to his lips. Waver’s lashes dip heavy over his eyes, blocking out the distraction of sight so he can lose himself in the heat of Iskandar’s mouth, and Iskandar lingers over him, taking his time with the effort until Waver’s arm around the other’s neck is trembling, until he’s lifted his sticky hand to catch and brace at the dip of Iskandar’s back in an attempt to hold himself still. Waver’s panting again by the time Iskandar pulls away to smile down at him.

“Someday I would have you draw pleasure from me with your hands alone,” Iskandar tells him. He shifts his knees apart to brace himself over Waver before he resettles his grip around the other’s length, his fingers tightening in to brace close against just Waver now. “For now I believe I owe you a debt.” And he draws up, his fingers dragging over Waver’s length and forcing a responsive curve into the other’s spine at one and the same time. Waver’s fingers clutch at Iskandar’s back, his hips buck up into jerking response, and for a moment it’s all he can do to fill his lungs against the surge of sensation that courses through him.

“ _Ah_.” His voice is too loud, it breaks high on the cliff of friction Iskandar is urging him over, but he can’t close his lips, can’t give up the strain in his body that is turning his breathing into words as fast as he gusts over an exhale. “ _Iskandar._ ”

Iskandar hums over him, the sound perfectly clear even if Waver can’t bring his eyes into focus on the man leaning close over him. “Yes,” he says, just that one word weighted with heat enough to curl Waver’s toes and flutter at his lashes aside from everything else. “Go on, princeling. I wish to hear you.”

Waver moans. “Iskandar,” he says, meaning it as protest, but it becomes desire in his throat, opens itself into a full-blown flower of pleasure as quickly as he shapes the other’s name. Iskandar is moving faster than he was before, his grip close around Waver’s length as he strokes with smooth force; Waver can feel the lingering stick of Iskandar’s pleasure against him, can feel the heat of it drying across his stomach and over his fingers. The thought of it glows in the depth of his stomach, calls up the clarity of Iskandar groaning into his shoulder, of the feel of Iskandar’s orgasm breaking over him under the persuasion of his touch, and when Iskandar’s grip draws up and over him Waver arches up, and gasps a breath, and lets Iskandar urge him forward and into his own release. His cock twitches, his thighs spasm, and when Iskandar’s fingers pull Waver spills over his stomach, striping the clinging weight of Iskandar’s own pleasure with the spend of his own. Waver shudders through his release, his body trembling with each wave that rushes over and through him, and Iskandar keeps working over him, drawing each surge of sensation free until Waver is too drained to manage even a shudder of tension. Iskandar draws his hold away, and reaches to clasp his hand around Waver’s hip instead, and Waver tightens his hold around Iskandar’s back and holds on for a long moment, just pressing himself against the other while the heat-stoked rhythm of his heartbeat eases and the languid hum of pleasure fades into the distant, half-pleasant ache of satisfied desire.

It’s Iskandar who shifts, eventually, turning his head in against Waver’s to gust a breath at the curve of the other’s ear. “We’ve made a mess of you,” he says, sounding far more pleased with this outcome than concerned by it. “And I imagine you would appreciate the heat of a bath, after last night.” Waver groans just at the thought of it and Iskandar laughs and presses a kiss against the dark of his hair. “You should investigate the bath,” he declares, tipping sideways to lie across the bed next to Waver as he loosens his hold on the other. “It served me well this morning.”

Waver tips his head to the side to cast his gaze through his lashes at the other. “What about you?”

Iskandar smiles. “I’m no worse than I might be after a evening spent thinking of the length of your legs and the taste of your lips, princeling.” Waver presses his lips tight together, feeling his cheeks darken with self-consciousness at the suggestion of this phrasing, and Iskandar’s smile pulls up into a grin at one corner of his mouth. “Take your bath. If you stay in too long I will come find you.”

Waver can feel his moment of embarrassment ease, drifting out of importance with the chill of premonition that runs over him. He drops his gaze from Iskandar’s smile to the span of his chest, fixing his attention on the breadth of the other’s shoulders as he tries to clear his throat of giveaway emotion. “And will you stay here?” he asks at last, sounding more calm than he had expected but more strained than he had hoped. “When I come back, will you still be here?”

Iskandar frowns. “What?” He pushes himself up onto one elbow so he can look more directly at Waver lying next to him. “You sound as if you await an execution. Of course I shall remain.”

Waver swallows. “For how long?” he asks. Iskandar is still looking at him but Waver can’t make his gaze lift to meet the other’s; he retrieves his hands from around Iskandar’s neck instead, drawing them in to the space between his body and Iskandar’s so he can fit his trembling fingers close together and press until their quiver is held back. “A night? A week? Will you remain a month, before you leave?”

A hand touches at Waver’s hair. “Princeling.” Iskandar’s fingers draw down to smooth the locks behind the other’s ear; Waver presses his lips together and tries to keep from whimpering at the comfort of the touch. “Will you look at me?” Waver sets his jaw and keeps his head turned down; Iskandar sighs and draws his hand in under Waver’s chin.

“Waver Velvet,” he says. “I order you to look at me.”

Waver would like to resist this. His cheeks are flushed into color and he can feel his throat working on emotion he is only barely holding back; he’s sure that looking up into Iskandar’s open expression will spill all the tears burning behind his eyes over his lashes and down to soak into the sheets beneath them, and he’d rather keep those inside the fragile cage of his own chest until he can lose them in the heat of the bathwater. But Iskandar’s fingers are firm at his chin, and Iskandar’s voice is level on his name, and it is Waver himself who gave that vow, who swore his obedience to the commands offered by the man before him. He shuts his eyes, squeezing his lashes tight together for a moment, and then he lifts his head and looks up.

Iskandar doesn’t look upset; he doesn’t look apologetic either, which is more comfort than Waver expected it to be. He just looks curious, and perhaps a little confused, with his expression drawn into the creased forehead and frown that uncertainty make of his face.

“I do not understand you,” he says bluntly. “What is it you are afraid of?”

“Nothing,” Waver tries to say; but his voice cracks halfway through, his eyes swim with liquid, and he has to choke over a sob before he can rasp into a breath enough to answer. “It’s just...you’ve taken this country for yours. You’ve made it part of your empire but.” Waver shakes his head and fights for clarity. “You don’t belong here. You need to go back to your city and your people.” Waver hiccups over a breath. “When are you leaving me?”

Iskandar’s expression has eased as Waver has spoken, the strain in his face giving way to understanding as the other struggles through his speech. The shift isn’t much comfort; it just leaves Waver fighting back tears under Iskandar’s steady gaze instead of his frowning confusion. But Iskandar told Waver to look at him, and that’s enough to keep Waver’s gaze turned upward, even as he hiccups and fights through the burn of tears that he can’t seem to restrain no matter what he tries. They look at each other for a moment, Iskandar steady and Waver trembling, and then Iskandar takes a breath to speak in a tone as level as his expression. “Are you dying, princeling?”

Waver blinks, startled out of even his misery for a moment of sheer shock. “What?”

“Are you suffering from some grievous wound I have not seen?” Waver shakes his head, still perplexed by this abrupt change in subject, and Iskandar continues. “Some wasting illness, then, that will claim your life while it has hardly flowered?” Waver is frowning confusion of his own, now; Iskandar lets his chin go to reach and push another stray lock of hair behind his ear. “If neither of those, then I do not understand the cause of your concern.”

“What?” Waver says, feeling as if he’s entirely missed some portion of this conversation he’s now caught in. “It’s as I said. You must return to your own city, you--” but Iskandar is shaking his head, and Waver’s words fall to silence at his lips in answer before he can decide to stifle them.

“No,” Iskandar says, and slides his hand back to weight at Waver’s head. “I swore an oath to protect your life with my own, princeling, so long as we both are living.” His gaze is steady on Waver’s face, his attention so fixed Waver can’t duck away even as he almost wishes to. “I am in no haste to give up those pleasures found in a physical existence. So unless you are…?” Waver shakes his head, offering the rejection at speed even as his cheeks flush and his throat tremors, and Iskandar beams down at him before he ducks in to press a kiss to Waver’s forehead.

“I do not know where we will go, princeling,” he says while Waver is still squeezing his eyes shut and trying to catch back the rasp of his breath in his chest. “But wherever I go you will come too. I do not intend to leave you behind.” Waver hiccups a breath, the strain breaking free of his chest in spite of himself, and Iskandar’s arm slides down to catch around his shoulders and pull him in close against the span of the other’s chest.

“You asked to follow where I go,” Iskandar murmurs against the top of Waver’s head, his voice clear even as Waver’s breathing breaks against him. “I would be a terrible king indeed if I went back on my word to you.”

Waver sobs an inhale. “You’re a good king,” he says, and untangles his hands from each other so he can reach out to wrap his arms around the man before him. “You are my king, Iskandar.” Iskandar’s hand presses to Waver’s hair, smoothing comfort against the other, and Waver turns his head to press his ear flush against the span of the other’s body and hear the steady thud of Iskandar’s heart beating in his chest.

The sound is as comforting as a lullaby.


	33. Belong

“Up!” The shout comes from the end of the training field; it’s at enough of a distance that Waver would struggle to make himself heard, even to someone listening to him. To the soldier sporting a heavy scar cleaving from his hairline to pull unamused tension up at the corner of his mouth, the volume sounds as natural as speaking in a more reasonable tone would be at someone else’s lips. Waver certainly hears him well enough; his body reacts on autopilot, his arms flexing to lift the bow and arrow in his hold before him. All down the line around him dozens of other men do the same, combat veterans and trainees alike moving as if part of some single organism guided by their instructor’s voice.

“Pick your marks,” the scarred soldier commands. “Draw.” The air strains with the creak of bowstrings and the pull of tense wood; Waver’s curves as far as his neighbors, drawn back into the graceful strain that he can feel pull pleasant effort along his arms and down into the flex of his fingers on the bow. His arm guard shifts at his forearm, settling into alignment against the sweat-slick of exertion coating Waver’s skin and sticking his shirt to the space between his shoulders.

“Take aim,” the instructor calls. Waver focuses his attention at the end of the arrow in his hold, breathing deep as he steadies himself and eases the metal of the tip up by the span of inch above the rough-painted targets at the other end of the shooting range. The men around him shift their stances slightly, adjusting arrows or tightening their grip; as the rustle dies to silence Waver can feel the tension in the air like a storm waiting to crackle into life. There’s a beat, a breath of perfect calm; then: “Fire!” and the calm erupts with the snap of bowstrings and the hiss of arrows streaking through the air. Some fall short of the targets, a few go high, but most of the men standing in their row have experience enough to hit at least the target, even if not the handspan of dark paint splashed in the center to mark out the bullseye. Waver’s own arrow is one of those; he hits several inches to the left of his goal, his arrow swept off course by the whip of the wind ruffling all their clothes, but it hits with force enough to embed itself inches deep in the bale of hay at which they’re shooting, which is satisfying in its own way.

“Looks like we have a whole four of you who can be trusted not to shoot themselves in the foot,” the instructor drawls with enough flatness on his tone that a murmur of laughter ripples down the line in answer. “That just mean more practice. And perhaps steel-toed boots.” He takes a step forward to pull their attention. “Take note of your error and adjust. Remember your enemy may not give you a chance to accommodate for the weather or your surroundings. If you were off by more than a few inches you’d have spent an arrow and gained nothing but wasted time.” He stays silent for a moment, looking up and down the line with intensity enough to grant his words extra weight, before he lifts his head and steps back to position himself clear of the edge of the grounds.

“One more round,” he declares, and lifts his arm in the unspoken signal to raise bows. Waver pulls another arrow from the trio he has stuck upright in the ground before him and draws it back against his bowstring, pulling the line taut as the same motion with which he raises the point of the arrow. “Marks.” Waver lines himself up with the same target he missed on his last shot; this time when he adjusts he corrects for the wind, bringing his aim over by a distance enough to compensate for the gap between the black target and his previous shot sticking to the side of it. “Aim.” Waver lets his breath go, a deliberate easing of the tension in his chest and along his shoulders, and this time when the command to “Fire” comes his fingers slide as smoothly off the string as if he was anticipating the order. Dozens of arrows arc through the air, spearing through the center of several of the targets, this time; Waver’s own flies true to sink into nearly the center of his own chosen mark. Waver lowers his bow from before him, his chest tightening with the satisfaction of a shot well taken, and from behind the line of archers there is a burst of applause, the sound of the clapping so loud that Waver doesn’t need the voice that follows it to speak to their audience’s identity.

“Well shot!” The line turns almost as one, pivoting away from their focus on the targets before them in answer to the voice of their king; Waver is one of the only ones who doesn’t turn, who stays facing forward even as he tips his head to listen to the rumble of Iskandar’s words. “You all never fail to impress me.”

“They are improving,” the scarred soldier allows. When Waver glances at him he has turned towards the man at the back edge of the training grounds, even if his position carries the crisp intent of formality instead of the excited stir filling the archers around Waver himself. “A few of these may be able to ride out with the next advance.” A ripple goes through the crowd as several voices all murmur excitement in varying attempts at a whisper, and the soldier looks back to his trainees with a frown.

“I’m afraid they’ll all be useless from here,” he declares, and lifts his arm to sweep through the air. “Dismissed. Do not miss the afternoon meal or you will do more damage to your recovery than good.” There’s a murmur of voices, agreement sincere and bored alike, and then the soldier turns aside and the trainees around Waver shift as one, moving in a wave to catch and form themselves around the solid reality of Iskandar at the back edge of the training grounds. There are a few of the other trainees who hang back, too shy or too new to offer greetings to the king directly; they help disguise the hesitation that keeps Waver where he is while the crowd around him gravitates towards Iskandar before dispersing to their own pursuits. By the time the last stragglers have departed there’s no one left to even cast a sidelong glance at Waver himself; he’s left to brace his bow against the inside of his boot and slide his grip up the length of the wood until he can pull the end down enough to free the loop of the bowstring from the top notch. He eases it back carefully, holding down against the wood to keep it from snapping up and free of his hold; he’s still gripping against the smooth-polished bow when an arm reaches over his shoulder and broad fingers close against the top of the bow to take some of the pressure.

“Let me give you a hand.” Iskandar’s voice is a hum just against the side of Waver’s head; his lips are close enough that Waver’s hair ruffles with the gust of the other’s breath. “Do you lack a greeting for your king, my princeling?”

“No,” Waver says, as Iskandar eases back the curve of the bow and he draws the string free to wind around the span of his own hand, ducking his head to fix his attention on the motion of his fingers rather than the shift of Iskandar’s arm alongside him. “You appeared rather occupied. I didn’t want to interrupt.”

“You didn’t even turn around.” Iskandar draws the bow away as Waver slides the looped string off his hand so he can fit it into his the pocket of his pants instead; his other arm comes up to slide in around Waver’s waist and tug to urge the other back and against him. “Do you have a strain of jealousy in you after all?” Iskandar turns his head so his mouth catches against Waver’s hair into the sketch of a half-formed kiss. “There is no need. You are the only one to share the span of my bed, after all.”

“That’s what I’m worried about,” Waver says, lifting his hand from his pocket to catch at the weight of Iskandar’s arm around him. He could probably push free if he wanted -- he lacks the strength to do it by force, but Iskandar is unfailingly considerate to Waver’s demonstrated desires -- but all he really does is tighten his fingers against the line of the other’s bare arm to dig tight in punctuation for his words as he tips his head halfway towards Iskandar behind him. “Everyone _knows_.”

Iskandar hums an incoherent question. “Knows what, princeling?”

“That I’m your lover,” Waver says. “That I...share your bed.”

“Mm,” Iskandar replies, with warmth enough under the sound that Waver thinks his imagination is leading him to a rather different conclusion than the self-conscious embarrassment Waver is fighting with. “Indeed you do.” His arm tightens to pull Waver back, his lips come in to brush against the line of the other’s cheek, but he pulls away before Waver can find voice for a protest, retreating to huff a sigh against the flush across the other’s skin. “And so? Does that make you less a soldier during the day, that your nights are given to your king?”

“No,” Waver says, but he’s not sure he really believes the words. “It doesn’t. It shouldn’t. But--”

“Has anyone ever treated you differently here?” Iskandar asks. “Looked at you askance, or whispered things they ought not to have said?”

Waver frowns. “That’s not the point.”

“Is it not?” Iskandar wants to know. “You must know yourself that you hardly receive special treatment.” He lifts his arm to gesture with Waver’s bowstaff to the training grounds around them. “You practice with the rest of the archers. You study with the rest of the mages. You can judge how effective you are compared to the rest. Do you believe yourself to be favored or judged for what you do in your own self?”

Waver grimaces and hunches his shoulders. “I don’t know.”

Iskandar reaches out to set Waver’s bow against the fence marking out the edge of the training field, balancing it carefully against the support before he lifts his hand to smooth against Waver’s hair. His other arm comes up, his hand drawing free of Waver’s lingering hold to brace the other’s head between his palms.

“Look.” Iskandar’s hands urge and Waver’s head comes up, his gaze lifting to follow the suggestion of the other’s hold and out across the span of the training field to the end, where the targets stand studded with dozens of arrows. “You have been out here firing alongside your fellow trainees for over an hour. How many of your shots found their mark?”

Waver huffs a breath. “Five.”

“Indeed,” Iskandar says. “And how many of those owe their accuracy to the pleasure I drew from you this morning?”

Waver’s cheeks flush dark under the brace of Iskandar’s hands; but the answer is as clear as Iskandar intended it to be. “None.”

“Mm.” Iskandar lets his hold on Waver’s head ease and slides his hands back and down to the other’s shoulders instead. “My men judge you for the effort you put forth and the success that grants you.” His hands press to squeeze against Waver’s shoulders and he leans in to murmur a conspiratorial whisper against the other’s ear. “If there is talk of where you spend your nights, I wager it comes more from a desire to take my place with you than anything else.”

Waver chokes on a breath. “ _What_ ,” he snaps, and twists to turn and face Iskandar as he lifts his hand to push against the other’s arm. “It does _not_! There is no one thinking of me so.”

Iskandar booms a laugh. “They are indeed,” he says. “You have more admirers than you realize.” He lifts his hand again to stroke through Waver’s tied-back hair, smoothing it against the line the other pulled it into before coming to the training grounds. “How lucky for me, to be able to satisfy my own desires on the object of them whenever I wish.”

Waver ducks his head. “Idiot,” he says, but softly and without pulling away from Iskandar’s hand sliding in and against the back of his neck, where his pulled-back hair is drawn into a tiny ponytail just over his collar. “ _I’m_ the lucky one, to have my king’s attentions.”

Iskandar chuckles in the depths of his chest. “Perhaps the benefit is to us both,” he allows. His fingers come up to catch at the ends of Waver’s hair and tug gently against the tie holding them back. “This is very nice, you know.”

“I just wanted it out of my face,” Waver says without lifting his head. “It’s finally long enough to tie it back without any clips.”

“Mm,” Iskandar hums again, still playing with the loose ends. “You should keep growing it out.” He lifts his hand to smooth against the top of Waver’s head and down against the pulled-back hair. “I would very much like to see you spread out across my bed with nothing but your hair to cover you.”

Waver lifts his hand to swat Iskandar’s hand aside as he looks up to scowl at the other. “Shut _up_ ,” he snaps. “Idiot.” But his mouth is catching on a smile in spite of himself, the curve of his lips giving away the flicker of pleasure in him alongside the burn of embarrassment, and when Iskandar grins and reaches for him again Waver leans into the contact instead of pushing him away.

“I am proud to have the keeping of you,” Iskandar says, murmuring the words soft into the space between them. “The day I met you was a precious one. Whatever else I might achieve, my life would be bereft without you at my side, princeling.”

Waver’s forehead creases, his mouth tenses on a tremor of emotion. For a moment his eyes are burning so hot he can’t trust his voice to speak. He reaches up instead, moving fast before he can lose his nerve for the action, to catch his hand at the back of Iskandar’s neck as he tips his face up towards the other’s.

“Iskandar,” he says, his throat working strain over even just that one word, and over him Iskandar’s smile breaks wide over his face, and Iskandar’s hold comes around to brace at Waver’s back, and Waver reaches up to wind both arms around Iskandar’s neck as the other urges him up onto his toes and into the gentle warmth of a kiss.

Waver has never felt so at home.


End file.
